had we but world enough, and time
by The Sophisticated Shut In
Summary: "Leela swallows. Two days ago Fry died in that seat. Holding her hand. Trying to tell her something. Her heart hurts." Freela. Groundhog Day!AU.
1. Chapter 1

**A / N : How to explain this fic . . . there's a long version and a short version, and the short version is, I spent some time in the hospital recently without access to the notes for any of my other fics (and not really trusting myself to write anything that mattered). But I got bored, and now we have this. ****_This_ being a Groundhog Day!Freela fic no-one asked for, the basic idea for which has been kicking around in my mind for about five years now. There are seven chapters to it in total and I plan on posting one every week or so while I work to catch up on my other fics. **

**There's not a whole lot to know going into this. It's a Freela fic, obviously, set after the end of the original series but before Bender's Big Score. Contains some fairly major angst (don't say I didn't warn you) but like most of what I write, it's not as big a downer as it seems. **

**You're all amazing, as always. Enjoy!**

* * *

_**I would love you ten years before the flood**_

* * *

November 23rd 3004 doesn't seem anything special.

New New York is in the grip of a dull gray smog, but Momcorp is trying to weaponize the weather, and so it is that Leela is woken at 8 am by a hailstone the size of a softball crashing through her window. (She knew windows were a bad investment.)

She picks the thing up before it can melt into the carpet and dumps it in her shower, running the hot water over it until it washes down the drain. Then she has to clean up the broken glass embedded in her floorboards, tape newspaper over the broken window, and feed Nibbler his morning bowl of Kibbles 'n' Snouts. By the time all this is done she's running late for work. So she skips breakfast, though she knows she'll pay for it later.

She skids into Planet Express with her stomach growling. The Professor has prototyped some new kind of syringe, and he wants the crew to deliver three crates of them to a private hospital for testing. Scruffy has already loaded the ship by the time Leela gets in, but Fry and Bender are, as usual, even later than her. The whole delivery will be behind schedule now, but it gives Leela the opportunity to run across the street for coffee, so she can't bring herself to care all that much.

It looks like the super-sized hailstones hit the Robot Arms Apartments too. When the boys arrive at last, Fry has ice chips in his hair and a tiny cut on his cheek, and Bender's chassis is dented in three different places.

The robot is still complaining about it when they reach their destination three hours later. He cheers himself up by stealing candy and balloons from a coma patient. This is the kind of appalling moral lapse Leela would normally chew him out for – but it's been a long day and she's hungry, and before she knows it she's eaten three pieces of salted caramel crunch. After that it seems hypocritical to object.

"It's not like Coma Guy is gonna eat them," Fry points out. "We're doing him a favor. Now he has more room for flowers and stuff. Cards. Whatever."

Leela sighs.

"You have a point."

Fry grins.

Later – after – Leela will remember that. The lazy unfurling of his smile will stick in her mind. Not because there is anything unusual about it, but because it's so ordinary. It's the smile he gives her a dozen times a day, the smile she takes for granted – hardly even looks at – because she knows she'll see it again before the memory has time to fade.

She can't remember what they talk about after that. TV and work and Nibbler, she supposes. The same old empty topics friends always fall back on when they run out of things to say. Eventually Bender takes over the conversation anyway, the way he always does, and Leela just tunes out and focuses on flying. Occasionally a word floats past her - "travesty" and "robot Adonis" and "scratch-free finish my ass"- from which she surmises the robot is complaining about the damage to his chassis again.

Suddenly Bender tugs on her elbow. The ship spins off-course and Leela has to swerve sharply to avoid an incoming hover-truck. She scowls back at the robot, once she's sure it's safe to do so.

"Bender! You could have killed us all. I don't know what you're playing at, but -"

Bender, as usual, waves away her criticism.

"You need to reboot Fry," he says.

"What?"

"Restart his operating system, or whatever you flesh-sacks do."

He gestures at Fry. Leela glances back. Fry looks a little paler than he normally does, but otherwise okay. He seems annoyed.

"I'm fine," he insists. "I told you, Yancy."

Leela starts.

"See?" Bender says. "He keeps calling me that. _Me._ Bender!"

It's clear he can't think of anything more offensive.

Leela's first thought is that this must be some kind of joke, but Fry's expression changes her mind. He looks genuinely frustrated.

"That's your name," he says. "Leela, tell him."

Leela frowns.

"Fry," she says carefully, "Yancy was your brother. Remember? And Bender is, well . . . _Bender._ I'm sure you can appreciate the difference."

It doesn't help.

"That's what I said," Fry insists. "Yancy is Yancy. Your name is Yancy. His name. My name. I said . . ." He breaks off and moves his lips soundlessly, like his mouth won't obey him.

Does he look paler? Is it her imagination? Leela makes up her mind in an instant.

"Bender, take control of the ship," she orders.

She moves over to Fry and crouches down in front of him, trying to get a good look at his face.

He is paler. She's not imagining it.

"Fry? Fry?" She shakes his shoulder. "Hey. Talk to me."

When he meets her gaze, Leela can see the panic in his eyes.

"I feel . . . don't." His voice is thick, slurred like he's drunk. But he's not. She'd know if he was. "Words," he mumbles. "I can't word."

"What?"

"Pizza. Yancy. Robot. Jelly."

The words are coming faster now, but they don't make any sense. It's gibberish, all of it.

"Slow down," Leela tries.

"Werecar. Nibbler. Egg salad!"

"Fry . . ."

She's at a loss. Whatever Fry is trying to tell her, it won't come out right.

"Sewer penguin stinger!" he gasps. He grabs her hand and grips it hard. His eyes are wild and desperate.

And then he blinks, confused, and blood starts to run from his nose.

Leela goes cold, all in an instant. After that, everything happens too fast to process.

She screams at Bender – _something's wrong _and _get him to a hospital _and _now! - _and she tries to stop up the bleeding with Fry's shirt, but she can't. It won't stop and it won't slow. It just keeps coming. He's getting paler and paler, twitching spasmodically, but he won't let go of her hand, and he won't stop trying to talk.

They're too far from the hospital. There's too much blood.

The realization hits her in a wave of sickness, and it hits Fry too. Leela is never sure what happens next. She starts screaming at Bender again, she thinks, because the blood is coming faster now and Fry is still trying to talk through it, his jaw working furiously on a single word.

"_Leela!" _

Leela has no idea if her name is what he meant to say, or if it's just more nonsense. Fry gasps – a single strained gulp – and then he seizes up and falls forward.

When Leela pushes him back his eyes are open, staring at nothing.

Underneath her, the hull of the ship scrapes across asphalt. Bender says something. Voices sound outside. Cool Earth air floods the cockpit. It all seems faint and far away, like it's happening to someone else.

Paramedics pry her hand out of Fry's, look him over and shake their heads.

And pain slices into her chest – real, physical pain, which doesn't make any sense because she's fine. _She's_ okay.

Fry's the one who . . . Fry's the one who just . . .

_Died, _her mind supplies. _Fry is dead. _

The pain flares in her chest again, and her world goes dark.

* * *

She wakes up, and doesn't know how long she was gone for.

She wasn't asleep – she knows that much. She's been sitting in this plastic seat while Amy talks at her. There's a paper cup in her hand and a fuzzy coffee taste in her mouth. She's been sipping hospital coffee, and listening to Amy talk, but until this point – this moment of awakening right now – she hasn't noticed any of it.

The inside of her head has been screaming white noise, because Fry is dead.

Fry is dead.

"Fry," she manages. Her voice cracks on the word, but Leela keeps going. "Fry is _dead._"

Amy stops mid-sentence.

There is a long silence.

"Yeah," she says at last. "Yeah, Leela, he's . . . he's pretty dead."

Hermes pats her hand sympathetically. (Hermes is here?)

"His brain is basically soup."

"The doctors don't think he suffered," Amy puts in quickly. "The language and communication centers of the brain broke down first, but it was all so fast, Leela, really. The doctors say it was as if his brain just forgot to give the orders – you know, breathing and heartbeat and stuff. It didn't hurt. He just . . . stopped."

Leela stares blankly back at her. All she can see is the terror on Fry's face, the way he gripped her hand and tried so desperately to tell her something before the blood started running from his nose.

"He knew," she croaks. "He knew something was wrong."

She feels numb, inside and out, but when she thinks of Fry – scared, and looking for her to help him somehow – the pain in her chest flares up again, becomes a hot knife of anger.

"What happened?" she demands. "He was fine! Someone did this, someone – was it Momcorp? Was it the Professor? Or Zoidberg! I bet it was Zoidberg. Did Zoidberg unleash some alien disease on him? Tell me! Tell me the truth!"

Amy backs away, looking scared.

"Leela, no-one knows!" She spreads her hands wide, in a gesture of complete bewilderment. "The doctors say it was a pathogen. Some new bacteria that has a hemorrhagic effect on human brain tissue."

"What?"

"They were studying it at the hospital. They had a patient there, Patient Zero, this guy in a coma." Amy hesitates. "Bender says . . . Bender says he broke into a coma patient's room to steal his candy. He says Fry was with him. That's how he got infected."

"No." Leela cuts her off. "That's not possible. _I_ ate that candy. I'm not sick."

Amy looks at her, her gaze sad and pitying.

"Leela," she says softly. "You're not human."

It's the first and only time someone has ever had to remind her, and it breaks something in Leela.

"There must be something we can do," she says wildly. "We can clone him, the Professor can clone him -"

"He wouldn't be Fry," Amy interjects. "Cubert isn't the Professor and if we cloned Fry, he wouldn't _be_ Fry. Just some kid who looks like him." She pulls at the sleeve of her pink sweatsuit. "He wouldn't remember us."

Pain flares in Leela's chest again. She feels like she's caving in on herself.

It's funny, she thinks, how easy it is to kill hope stone dead. You can do it with only four words.

"I'm gonna take you home," Amy says gently. "You'll feel better if you get some sleep."

"No." Leela can't dredge up a more animated response than that. All she knows is that she won't leave here. She won't leave Fry. "No."

"Leela . . . Leela, he's gone." Amy's eyes are shiny with tears. "You can't help him anymore, he's -"

"No!"

Leela's arm jerks, slopping vending machine coffee onto Amy's sweatpants. It must be cold, because the other woman doesn't react.

Instead she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a slim adhesive square.

"The doctor gave me this," she says, peeling off the protective paper backing. "I didn't want to use it, but . . ." She slaps the patch onto Leela's neck. "I'm sorry, Leela."

Leela reaches up, scratching wildly in her attempt to peel it off, but the sedative in the patch must act fast. Her fingertips are already too thick to obey her. She can't find the edge, can't move them fast enough, and her vision is beginning to dim.

She falls out of the chair and as her knees hit the floor, Hermes and Amy rush to stop her falling.

"_No,_" she says weakly, but there's no fight left in her, and when her head hits Amy's shoulder it's as soft as a pillow, and she sinks into it, into pink polyester and cloyingly sweet perfume, and arms that won't let her go.

* * *

There's a night sky on the other side of her broken window, and she's back in her apartment. Nibbler is fussing at her, and Amy is pushing cups of camomile tea at her and telling her to eat something, please, keep her strength up, and it's all unreal somehow, more lost time, more inexplicable mundanity, and -

_Fry is dead, _her mind reminds her.

Amy is still talking, but she must realize Leela has stopped listening, because eventually she stops. She clears away the uneaten food and piles more blankets on top of Leela, and then she talks to someone on the phone – _she's catatonic _and _it's not sinking in _and _I don't know what to do _and then _I love you, I love you so much, if it was you I can't even imagine what I'd . . . _

Leela stops listening again, and a little while later Amy hangs up the phone and turns out the light.

Her friend lies down on the couch in the other room, leaving the door open between them, and then she cries little snuffling cries until she falls asleep.

Leela lies awake and stares at the ceiling, and wonders if she'll ever sleep again.

* * *

Hours later, Bender breaks in.

He does it quietly enough not to wake Amy, and he doesn't steal anything. Or say anything. There's a beard of rust creeping along his jawline, and Leela knows instinctively that he's sober. He hasn't had a drop of alcohol since it happened.

She wonders how long he can go without it until his system shuts down.

She wonders why she doesn't blame him.

He pushes something at her. It's cool from his chest compartment, and the fabric is gray in the dark, but it smells like Slurm and stale sweat and _Fry_, and she doesn't need light to know what it is. To see the color red.

Leela clutches it tightly and Bender leaves, as silently as he arrived.

There's a stick of gum in the pocket of Fry's jacket, and a ring of keys, and the tab from a can of Slurm.

Leela digs her fingers in deeper and traces the outline of each item, over and over again, until she knows them by heart.

The teeth of the keys. The loop of the tab. The worn-down foil on the gum.

She traces them again and again, and thinks of nothing, and eventually, somehow . . . she falls asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

She is woken by the sound of breaking glass, at 8am.

Fry's jacket is gone, and the cup of camomile tea Amy left by the bed is gone too.

So is Amy.

Nibbler is curled up on the couch cushions, gnawing contentedly on a ham, and there is a cold wind blowing in through the hole in the window. The newspaper Leela taped up yesterday has vanished, and when she gets out of bed, her toes sink into soggy carpet.

The hailstone is melting fast, but there are shards of ice mixed in with the glass on the carpet. It looks like it was a big one.

The size of a softball, maybe.

Leela stares at it. Her feet are going numb, but she doesn't much care.

That's her window, newly broken. But that doesn't make any sense. For Leela to be looking at that, someone would have had to come in and repair it while she was sleeping, and this is New New York. There isn't a repair-bot in the city who'd answer a call-out that late, even if Leela had tried to call – which she didn't. She knows she didn't.

Leela abandons the window and goes to the TV instead. She turns on the speaking clock channel.

The clock dings.

"_Good morning, New New York. The time is 08:16 a.m on Wednesday November 23__rd__,"_ it announces.

It dings again.

"_Good morning, New New York. The time is 08:17 a.m on Wednesday November 23__rd__." _

_Ding._

"_Good morning, New New York. The time is -"_

Leela stares. The blood is rushing wildly in her head.

Wednesday. November 23rd.

But . . . that was yesterday.

Nibbler skitters anxiously around her feet. He must be picking up on her distress, but Leela doesn't have time to comfort him. She nudges him aside and sprints back into the bedroom, pulling on her clothes. She doesn't have time for lipstick, or a scrunchie.

The Robot Arms is four blocks away. Leela skips the backed-up transport tubes and runs there instead. She catches her breath in the elevator and wipes the sweat off her forehead, sucking in lungfuls of air.

"Bender! Bender!" Her fists are beating a dent into the door. She must look like a crazy person. "Bender!"

The door yields unexpectedly, and Leela falls into the apartment.

"What's the big idea?" Bender says, affronted.

"Bender?"

"D'oy. I live here, nutto. What's your excuse?"

He's still here.

He's not sober, and he doesn't look anything worse than mildly annoyed. He doesn't look like someone whose best friend died less than 24 hours ago.

"I – but -" Leela stops. This doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any _sense_. "Yesterday," she manages. "Fry. He – it happened. You remember - don't you? He – I -"

She still can't bring herself to voice it out loud.

Bender whistles, corkscrewing a finger to the side of his head.

"Lady, you've lost it."

A familiar voice floats in from the other room.

"Who lost it?" Fry saunters in, rubbing his head with a towel. There are ice chips in his hair. "Oh, hey, Leela. Why are you here?"

Leela stares.

"F-Fry?"

It can't be. It can't be him.

"Hey." He waves offhandedly at her, already turning away to the kitchen, and then his gaze drifts back to her and he frowns. "You look terrible. I mean" - he gulps - "not _terrible_. The other thing, you know -"

"Awful," Bender supplies.

"Yeah, that. Wait, no! That's not what I meant, I meant -"

"Haggard."

"No!"

"Crappy?"

"Bender! You're not helping!"

They're still bickering, but Leela can't hear them any more. The blood is rushing in her ears again, because Fry is here in front of her, whole and safe and _alive_, and, and . . .

And yesterday he was dead.

He's not dead now. When she touches him he's real and solid. There's a pulse thrumming in his neck, and a little nick bleeding on his cheek where a hailstone must have caught him, and his hair is still damp from the towel.

His cheeks are slowly turning red.

"Um. Leela?"

It's at this point that Leela realizes she's cradling Fry's face in her hands and staring at him like he's Marley's ghost.

She lets go quickly.

"I don't understand," she murmurs.

"Are – are you okay?" Fry stammers.

"I don't know," Leela answers truthfully. "I - pinch me," she decides.

"Uh-uh. No way!"

"I'll do it!"

Bender's metal fingers pinch hard on the flesh of her arm, and Leela gives an involuntary yelp.

Well, that settles it. This isn't a dream.

In the dream world of her coma, Leela hadn't been able to feel anything at all - and she hadn't questioned it either. She's perfectly lucid now, and that pinch hurt. This is unquestionably the real world.

Fry is trying to get her to sit down.

"What's wrong?"

Leela shakes her head.

"Nothing. I . . . nothing's wrong. Everything's _right_," she says, perturbed.

Fry stares blankly at her.

"I don't get it."

Leela sighs.

"You don't have to. I'm sorry, Fry. I didn't mean to scare you. I woke up today and I thought . . ." She laughs nervously. "It doesn't matter what I thought. It was a bad dream, is all."

Fry flinches.

"That's what you said when you woke up from your coma," he says. "You said you had a bad dream, but you wouldn't tell me what it was about. And then you acted all weird about it, for weeks."

"This" - _isn't the same, _Leela starts to say, but who is she kidding? It's exactly the same.

Is this going to keep happening to her? Is her subconscious going to keep killing Fry in horrible new ways, until she gives in and admits that she -

\- feels something she absolutely refuses to examine any more closely.

"I'm sorry," she says instead. She takes a deep breath. "Let me make it up to you guys. I'll get us breakfast."

Leela's apology breakfast (coffee and donuts for Fry, fortified motor oil for Bender) seems to do the trick. The day gets back on track and by midday they're in the air and Leela has started to relax. There was a moment when she panicked, when the Professor handed her the delivery details (three crates of prototype syringe, headed to a private hospital in the Sera system) but she reasons it was just deja-vu. Hermes always types up the itinerary a week in advance – she must have looked at it ahead of schedule and it bled into the dream somehow, like the hail storm. It doesn't mean anything.

Bender keeps up a steady stream of complaints (something about a scratch on his chassis, Leela isn't really paying attention) but Fry is unusually quiet as they fly.

"You're looking at me," he says suddenly.

"What?" Leela jumps guiltily. "No, I'm not. . ."

"I can see you in the window." He indicates his reflection in the glass.

"Oh."

Fry hesitates.

"If I asked about the dream again," he says, "would you tell me?"

Leela shudders.

"No."

"It might make you feel better though."

Leela shakes her head.

"I don't want to relive it, Fry." She shoots him a tentative smile. "It's over, it wasn't real. That makes me feel better."

"Well . . . okay. If you're sure."

"I am." Leela swallows. "But . . . thanks."

She smiles shyly at him, and this time, Fry smiles back.

Leela makes the delivery as planned. Fry and Bender disappear while she's signing the papers, and when they show up again, Bender is clutching a bunch of balloons, and Fry is chewing on a piece of candy.

Leela freezes.

Cold terror sleets through her.

"Where did you get that?"

"This?" Fry looks down at the piece of fudge in his hand. "Oh, Bender stole it from this guy in a coma. He won't miss it though. They were feeding him through a tube in his nose, and candy wouldn't fit. See?" He holds it up. "It's too big."

Leela stares. Her brain has stopped. She can't breathe.

"You want some?" Fry continues, oblivious. "It's really good. There's caramels."

He holds out the box.

Leela gapes at it in horror, and then she wakes up and slaps it out of his hand.

"Hey!"

"Spit it out!" she cries.

"What?"

"The candy!" Leela grabs him by the shoulders. "Spit it out, right now!"

"I already swallowed it!"

Leela blanches.

"Oh, god."

"That was a waste of perfectly good candy," Fry complains. "And I didn't even steal it, I just ate it, so if you're mad at anyone, you should be mad at Yancy."

Leela is frozen in the grip of her own terror.

"Bender," she croaks. "You mean Bender."

"That's what I said already."

"You said Yancy," Leela says faintly.

"No, I didn't." Fry looks at her like she's crazy. "I said Yancy." He frowns. "Yancy," he says again, testing it out. "No, I said _Yancy . . ." _He stops, frustrated.

Bender shoves him in the shoulder.

"What gives, meatbag? I'm your hero, Bender. Remember? Not some fleshwad loser from the Stupid Ages."

Fry blinks slowly.

"I know," he mumbles. "I know that." He blinks again. "I feel funny."

And then he staggers, and Leela jumps to hold him up. The blood is draining fast from his face. He looks ashy white.

No. _No. _Not again.

"Bender," Leela cries. "Get back to the ward. Tell the doctors a human is infected. Tell them they have to come, now!"

"Someone else do it," Bender starts to say, still peevish over the slight to his ego, but Leela overrides him.

"Now, Bender!"

"Why me?"

_"Because he'll die if you don't!"_

Maybe it's her words, or maybe it's the way she screams them at him. Either way, Bender turns tail and flees back the way he came.

Fry grips her arm and falls to his knees, dragging Leela with him.

He's shaking.

"L-Leela? I'm scared."

Leela swallows.

"I know." She smooths his hair back and tries to keep her voice level, though terror is screaming in her chest. "I'm here. I'm here. It'll be okay."

Fry nods.

"Don't leave," he pleads. "Don't leave us. No, us. _Us._ Them!"

He can't find the word "me". Deja-vu sweeps over Leela in a wave like nausea.

"I won't leave you," she swears, squeezing his hand, and Fry seems to calm.

"I need you," he mumbles.

"I'm right here."

"No. No!" Fry protests. "You don't think. Don't _think_." _Understand,_ he must mean, but he can't find the word for that either. He's becoming agitated again, slipping further down the wall. "I need you," he insists. "Need . . . you. Tell you." He gasps, straining for breath. "Leela. _Leela!_" he says fruitlessly, and she knows he's trying to tell her more than her name.

She's crying before it starts, this time, because she knows it's coming, knows every beat of this awful waking nightmare.

Fry lets go of her arm and lifts up his hand, staring in incomprehension at the blood dripping onto his upturned palm. It's running out of his nose.

"No," Leela begs. "No, no, please . . ."

The blood comes faster and Fry starts fitting, and it's happening again, it's happening all over again . . . .

There are running footsteps behind her, and then all of a sudden the doctors are here. They're pushing her away from Fry, thrusting needles into him as he convulses, and Bender is holding onto her, jittery with fear. There are lights and shouts and it's a blur, it's all a blur to her.

* * *

This time around, Fry doesn't die.

This time around, they never leave the hospital. The doctors figure it out faster, Leela doesn't panic, they don't lose precious minutes to confusion.

This time the doctors are able to stop the bleeding and give Fry oxygen – but they can't undo the damage that's already been done.

This time Fry doesn't die, but Leela doesn't save him either.

Because he won't wake.

* * *

They put him in an isolation ward, hooked up to machines.

He's not supposed to have visitors, but Leela is immune even before they stick her full of antidote, and the nurses all seem to think she's Fry's wife - which doesn't make any sense, but isn't something she feels like correcting. Not when they all assume she's his next of kin. Even Bender sees the use in the lie – it gets them updates that would normally have to come via the Professor, and it means Leela can give permission for visitors – so he loudly affirms it to all the doctors. He even conjures a ring from his chest compartment. It's too big, and it swivels sideways on her finger when she puts it on, but Leela wears it anyway.

Sitting by Fry's bedside, she finds herself fiddling with it, twisting it left and right in half-turn motions.

They've shaved his head.

It doesn't suit him. He doesn't look like Fry without his thick ginger hair. And his face is too still. Leela has known Fry for nearly five years now, and she's never seen him this devoid of expression. She's watched him sleep hundreds of times, and always been able to read some vestige of his dreams on his sleeping face. There's nothing to read there now. Wherever he is – whatever's left of him – he's too deep to dream.

Leela wonders if this is how she looked, in that post bee sting coma. If this is how Fry felt, sitting by her bedside those two weeks.

She should talk to him. That's what he did, to keep her mind together. To this day Leela can't tell how much of what she heard was real, and how much was her subconscious running wild (especially at the end - she's fairly sure her best friend didn't _actually_ confess his love for her, and she tries hard not to think about why she would want him to) but one thing has always been certain. Fry saved her.

And she couldn't save him in return.

"I should talk to you," she says hoarsely. "But I don't know what to say. I don't know how you did it, Fry."

Bender would be better at this. Or Amy. Their brains wouldn't be so roasted by grief and shock. They'd be able to think straight, to have hope.

"I'm sorry I'm not better at this. I'm sorry I couldn't save you." Leela sniffs. "You'll think I'm crazy – _I _think I'm crazy. But I knew this was going to happen. I watched it happen before. Yesterday. I don't know how – I don't know why – but I lived through all of this. I watched you . . . I watched . . ."

She can't say it. Apparently some part of her has hope after all, because she can't bring herself to say the word "die" and invite that specter into Fry's hospital room.

"I watched it all," she says instead. "And I could have learned from that. I could have stopped it. But I was too slow, it seemed too crazy. I was so relieved when I saw you this morning, and I wanted that to be real – I wanted everything to be normal again." She shakes her head. "I had a second chance, and I blew it, Fry. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Fry's hand is cool and unresponsive. Leela squeezes as hard as she can, and prays that somewhere in there, he can feel it.

She swallows.

"I don't know what you were trying to tell me earlier, or yesterday. But earlier, you said . . . you needed me." Her voice breaks, and it's a minute before she recovers enough to go on. "I need you too, Fry. I need you to wake up. I need you to get better, and if I have to sit here every day for a year – every day for _ten_ years – I'll do it. I'll stay with you, I'll wait, because I can't imagine my life without you. You're the best friend I've ever had, and I don't want to live in a world without you. Do you hear me? Do you understand?" She squeezes harder. "I need you to wake up. I need you to just . . . _wake up." _

How many times did Fry say that to her? Is this how he felt, this helpless? How did he stand it?

She has to keep talking. Every moment she's not talking is a moment she could lose him.

"I never told you what I dreamed," she murmurs. "In my coma."

It's easier to tell him, like this. The story pours out of her, all her grief and madness - even the bizarre musical interlude with Bender, and the faces accusing her in the wallpaper. It's almost like talking to herself.

In a way it's a relief, to tell it all at last.

She leaves out the end of the dream, that murky moment between sleep and wakefulness when she thought she heard Fry say he loved her. He's never mentioned it, and if Leela hallucinated the whole thing, it's too embarrassing to draw attention to – even to a Fry she's mostly sure can't hear her.

She talks until her throat is raw. The nurses bring her hospital food, and try to pry her away from the bedside - _"take a walk, sweetie", "go to the restroom", "he's not going anywhere"_ \- but Leela ignores them. She ignores Amy too, when her friend shows up with coffee and flowers and bursts into noisy tears at the sight of Fry.

Bender is the only one who doesn't get in her way. He just sits in the corner and watches them. Watches Leela talk, watches Fry's monitors blip gently, watches his chest rise and fall.

For the first time in his life, the robot has nothing to say.

Leela is falling asleep. Her body can't keep going forever – without food or rest, it's starting to protest. Her words become muddled and blurry, and she keeps trailing off, only realizing she's fallen asleep when she jerks awake.

Bender is watching her, expressionless again.

"You fell asleep," he points out.

Leela shakes her head. Her brain feels like fuzzy cotton candy.

"I can't," she mumbles. "I have to keep talking to him."

Bender cocks his head to the side.

"That's what he said," he says slowly.

He's talking about her coma, when Fry stayed with _her_.

_I'm so tired_, Leela thinks. Fry is the one unconscious, but she could sleep for a week again, easy. Two weeks, maybe.

And maybe when she wakes up, Fry will be okay again, by some miracle. When she wakes up . . .

Her face bounces off the mattress by Fry's hand, and she jolts upright again.

"'m awake . . ."

Bender shifts in his seat, and then there's a sound – a scritchy, audio-playback whine, and a soft click.

"_I never told you what I dreamed,"_ she hears herself say. _"In my coma. I think I can tell you now."_

She blinks.

"Bender?"

There is another soft _click_ as he halts playback.

"Yeah, yeah. You're mad I recorded you. Get over it. I'm a robot – I record everything. It's how my memory works, remember?"

"Oh."

This is true. Bender's memory literally consists of audio-visual files written to his hard drive. It shouldn't surprise her that he can select and replay them at will.

What would upset her - if she had the energy to be upset about anything - is that Bender was there listening to her say all that. But he doesn't apologize (when does he ever?) and Leela is too wrung-out to really feel anything.

She's slumping over again. She can't keep her head up anymore, or her eye open.

None of this is important, anyway.

Fry is important. Keeping Fry together. Keeping Fry alive.

She has to save him.

"It doesn't have to be me," she mumbles. "You can talk to him too. It's the talking that matters."

Bender snorts.

"Shut up, meatbag," he says, and then he clicks off again, and Leela hears her own voice, saying _"I don't want to live in a world without you"_ and _"I was only happy in my dreams, with you"_ and _"wake up, Fry, please, wake up_. . ."

The fog of sleep closes over her, and everything vanishes.


	3. Chapter 3

She wakes to the sound of breaking glass.

The monitors, Bender, Fry's hand in hers . . . it's all gone. She's back in her own bed, in her own _apartment. _Back on Earth.

It's 8 a.m, and Leela doesn't have to check to know it's Wednesday morning.

Again.

Slowly, Leela pulls back the covers and gets out of bed. She picks up the melting hailstone, dumps it in the shower drain, runs the hot water over it.

Then she gets in herself and shuts her eye, letting the jetstream pound against her forehead.

It's soothing.

Nibbler has finished his ham by the time she gets out, and for the first time Leela feels a twinge of annoyance. She skipped breakfast that first day, so she'd have time to feed him – and all along he'd already eaten. Today she brews a cup of coffee and ignores his scritching at the refrigerator door.

She's thinking.

Today is Wednesday – the third Wednesday in a row she's woken up to. This is obviously insane. It's not possible to live the same day three times over.

But that's what she thought yesterday, and look where that got her.

Leela puts a bagel in the toaster, feeling preternaturally calm.

The first time she lived this Wednesday, Fry died. The second time, he wound up in a coma. Leela is no scientist, but she doesn't have to understand what's causing this to appreciate it for what it is – a second chance to save Fry.

Fry isn't supposed to die, and Leela is the only one who can save him. That has to be it. The others don't remember the previous two days because they don't need to – they don't have the power to change events, and she does.

That has to be it.

It makes sense. A universe where Fry dies horribly – a universe where _he's killed by a piece of candy_ – doesn't make any sense at all. Of course reality is trying to reset itself.

Well, Leela has never been one to shy away from a challenge. And this should be easy.

All she has to do is keep Fry away from that hospital.

* * *

Fry and Bender are late for work again. Bender is complaining about the scratch on his chassis, and Fry has that tiny nick on his cheek again, where the hailstone caught him.

It's not bleeding much – barely smarting, really – but the sight of his blood makes Leela feel ill.

"You're bleeding," she tells him, gesturing at the spot.

"Huh? Oh."

Fry puts a hand to his cheek, and blinks in surprise at the blood that comes away on his fingers. He hasn't even noticed.

"Here."

The ship's first aid kit is almost empty, but there's a band aid buried under the tylenol and tubes of burn cream. Leela fishes it out and hands it to him.

Fry smiles at her – a bright, fleeting thing that makes warmth flare in her chest and a sick feeling twist in her stomach.

"Thanks," he says, dabbing at his cheek, and Leela tries not to shudder.

"It's nothing," she says brusquely. "It's a band-aid, Fry."

Leela sits down in the captain's seat and grips the wheel tightly, before her hands can do something treacherous like tend to his wound. Or cradle his face again. If yesterday taught her anything, it's that her reactions to the miracle of a living breathing Fry make her look flat-out crazy to the rest of the crew. She'll need to rein herself in and act normal if she wants to make it through the day without arousing anyone's suspicions.

Mercifully, Fry busies himself with the band-aid and stops smiling at her, giving Leela the opportunity to school her expression.

This is just a normal day, and Leela is just her normal self, experiencing normal reactions to perfectly normal events.

_Well, that's a normal thought process, _she thinks snidely, and then, _Shut up, _because if she starts questioning her sanity, it'll all be over.

"So where are we going?" Fry asks.

He's asking because he was late. The ship had already been loaded by the time he and Bender showed up.

They have no idea how this day is supposed to go.

"We're making two separate deliveries today," Leela decides.

"We are?"

"Yes. Bender, you're taking the crates in the hold to a hospital in the Sera system. Fry, you're coming with me."

As expected, the boys object.

"Work? Alone?" Bender makes a failing buzzer noise. "Why can't I go with you losers?

"Yeah!" Fry complains. "You can't split us up! We're a team! Like the Three Amigos, or those three bears that teamed up and ate that girl."

"Goldilocks?"

"No, it was at the zoo."

Leela sighs.

"It's one delivery," she tells them. "You'll cope."

"But Bender'll be_ bored,_" Fry insists.

Bender nods fervently.

"Why can't I go with you meatbags? We can make two deliveries. Normally I'm against doing two things if I can get away with only doing one thing, but -"

Leela rubs her thumb in slow circles against her temple. She's getting a headache.

Why didn't she just jettison the cargo and forget the stupid delivery? She's never been a good liar. (Repressing, yes. Outright lying? No.) But she's started down this path now. Her only option is to see it through.

"You can't come with us," she invents wildly. "We're going to a planet that . . . doesn't allow robots."

Bender gasps.

"There's a planet that bans robots? This is an outrage! An _outrage_, I tell you!"

"There's a planet that bans humans," Fry points out.

Bender waves a dismissive arm.

"That's different. This is discrimination of the only kind that matters – the kind against me! We should start a war. What's the name of this lame-o planet anyway?"

"Uh." Leela shifts the gearstick in an effort to buy herself time. It doesn't work. Her brain doesn't come up anything good in the extra three seconds. "Human . . . . icon. Five," she says weakly.

"I'm gonna blast 'em back to Humanicon _Zero_!" Bender vows.

Fry laughs, but when Leela groans he stops.

He sits up, raising his hands in a placatory gesture.

"Maybe you should just do the delivery, Bender. I mean, these humans sound douchey, sure . . . but you always say going to war is a pain in the ass. Remember the last time we went? You had to sit in_ meetings_. With _balls._"

Bender shudders.

"Don't remind me," he says darkly.

* * *

Eventually Bender caves and agrees to do the delivery. They drop him off a parsec away from the hospital. (If anyone asks, Leela will pretend she got the co-ordinates confused. She's not taking any chances with Fry, and Bender will find a way to cover the distance, she reasons. It's _Bender._ He's creative.)

They fly in circles for an hour, and then Leela pretends to "discover" their delivery is missing from the hold. She's a terrible actress, and she knows she's hamming it up, but Fry seems to believe the charade. Or at least, he's happy to blame Zoidberg, say nothing, and get paid for an hour of drinking Slurm and listening to ancient pop music.

"_I got you, babe, oh, I got you, babe . . ."_

Leela's fingers twitch on the wheel. Fry is singing along with some relentlessly cheerful 20th Century tune. He's slouched so far back in his seat he's almost horizontal, his feet on the dash and his hands dancing in mid-air, conducting an imaginary orchestra.

There's something perverse about seeing him so happy, so completely oblivious to his own fate.

It doesn't help that for all his enthusiasm, Fry still can't stay in tune.

"_I got you to hold my hand," _he warbles.

_"I got you to understand,_

_I got you to walk with me,_

_I got you to talk with me,_

_I got you to kiss goodniiiiiight,_

_I got you to hold me tiiiiight,_

_I got you, I won't let go,_

_I got you to love me sooooooo . . ."_

Leela swallows.

Two days ago Fry died in that seat. Holding her hand. Trying to tell her something.

Her heart hurts. It's not the sharp pain she felt the first time, but it's a persistent ache – like an old wound, like a phantom limb. In this world, it never happened. But somewhere else it did. In Leela's memory, it did.

"Hey, wait." Fry has finally noticed their return to Earth's orbit. "This is home! We never went back for Bender."

Leela smiles. The motion feels unnatural, and she stops quickly.

She's never been good at nonchalance.

"He called while you were checking the hold," she lies. "He's not coming home today. He, uh . . . he met a friend. From . . ." She strains the limits of her imagination. "From bending school."

Fry frowns.

"Flexo?"

"No."

"Torso?"

Leela snorts, involuntarily.

"Bender does not have a friend called Torso, Fry."

Fry blinks at her.

"Sure he does. They were on the same assembly line, but he ran away and became a bull-fighter." He tugs his jacket off the back of his seat and brandishes it like a red flag. "Olé!"

"Oh lord."

Leela massages her temple. Apparently life is stranger than fiction, where Bender is concerned.

Fry persists.

"So was it him?"

"No."

"Oh, I know! It was The Contractor, right? No, wait. He narced on the robot mafia and the Don-Bot put him in a shallow grave." Fry considers. "Was it Gordo?"

Leela lands the ship and sighs.

"You know, I'm not sure. How do you know so much about Bender's school days anyway?"

Fry shrugs back into his jacket.

"We went to his reunion. It was fun, but everyone there was a robot, and the potato chips were gritty and metallic."

He pulls a face.

Leela sighs again. They were probably lug nuts, but she doesn't have the energy to start that argument, and if Fry is still upright, he can't have had much success in eating them.

"So . . . " Fry hesitates as they leave the ship. "Do we have to go out again?"

"What?"

"The delivery." Fry gestures around the empty cargo bay. "The one we forgot. Do we have to go out again?"

Leela blinks.

_Right, right._ Her lie from earlier. It's getting hard to keep track.

"No," she decides. "We can do it tomorrow."

"Okay. Well . . . see ya."

Fry heads for the exit, and a thousand different versions of his death play themselves out in Leela's head.

He could be hit by a hovercar crossing the street. He could be stabbed by that crazy robot Roberto. He could open a can of Slurm and choke on the first sip.

She's being ridiculous – she _knows_ she's being ridiculous – but the terror that roots her to the spot is all too real.

"Wait!" she cries. She swallows. "I . . . It . . . it's such a nice day. We could go for a walk."

Mom's weaponized hailstones rattle against the windows of Planet Express, making a mock of her words. Fry stares at her.

"In the sewer," Leela corrects. "We could – I was going to – visit my parents." Well, that was smooth. "Because the sewer is where they live," she elaborates. "Underground." She smiles desperately. "You could come. Unless you have plans, of course."

If he does, Leela will have to either sabotage those plans or stalk him. Ugh. This is harder than she expected.

"Well . . ." Fry mulls it over. "I was gonna watch tv. But I could do that later, I guess."

"Yes. You could. You absolutely could."

Is she sweating? Oh, god. She is. Between that and her frantic smiling, she's tipping into crazy territory again.

Leela forces herself to take a long, slow breath.

Fry is looking at her, his head tilted to one side as if trying to figure her out.

"You want to do something? Just the two of us?"

Leela breathes a sigh of relief.

"Yes. That's exactly what I want."

Fry looks momentarily confused, and Leela realizes that this is a reversal of their usual dynamic. What she's doing now is what Fry does, every once in a while when he gets it into his head that they should date. He chases after her, suggesting they catch an ape fight, a robot wrestling match, a blernsball game. _Just the two of us. _

It's an idea he returns to every so often, and Leela can't pretend she doesn't understand why. There's always been something there - a mutual attraction it's easier to pretend she doesn't feel. It's a thing they fall into in moments of vulnerability, a hesitant, _almost_ thing Leela isn't convinced is strong enough to survive the real world. It's never been worth risking their friendship over, and Leela has always been the only one of them mature enough to understand that risk. Leela has never stayed friends with an ex. She burns those bridges, cauterizes the source of the hurt and never looks back.

If Fry stays her friend, he'll never become another burnt bridge.

So Leela lets him down (easy, mostly) and they stay as they are. It wasn't until the lucid dream of her coma that she realized keeping Fry at a distance wasn't a foolproof way to keep herself from hurt. It wasn't until she watched him die that she realized he could break her heart just fine as a friend.

If any hint of this shows on her face, Fry is wise enough not to mention it.

"Okay," he says. He doesn't push for an explanation – which is good, because Leela doesn't have a coherent one to offer. "We should bring them pizza," he says. "I bet they don't have pepperoni pie in the sewer."

"They . . . don't."

Leela's parents have never tasted pizza in their lives. Until this moment, she's never thought about it.

How long would it have taken her to have that thought, if Fry's mind hadn't settled there on a whim? Months? A year? Never?

She pushes her discomfort away. By the time today is over, she'll have Fry back, and she can stop torturing herself with visions of a world without him.

* * *

Fry gets carried away and orders a thirty inch double pepperoni stuffed crust, with no thought for how it's going to fit down a manhole.

The climb from the surface is a mile deep, and they bicker the whole way down. The verbal push-and-pull is comforting. It's a familiar rhythm and it eases the awkwardness of Leela's confession. There's no real animosity behind it. There never is. By the time Leela helps him off the last rung, Fry is grinning at her.

"See?" he says, tapping the top of the pizza box. "I told you it'd fit."

"We had to strap it to your back," Leela points out.

"So?" Fry crows. "I'm warm and I smell like pizza. Win and double win!"

"You're an idiot."

"Tell me something I don't know. Or, don't, because that could be a lot of things, and then you'd never stop -"

"You're _my_ idiot," Leela blurts out.

She hugs him suddenly, crushing the pizza box between them – and either the hug catches him off-guard or she really _did_ tell him something he didn't know, because Fry has been struck dumb. He doesn't even respond to the hug, though he gapes at her when she pulls away.

"Um."

Leela reddens.

"Come on," she says quickly. "The pizza's getting cold."

Her parents are thrilled by her unexpected visit. They're also thrilled by surface food, and by the sight of Fry. (They've always had a soft spot for Fry. The first time they met him, he stopped Leela shooting them in a confused rage, and the experience left them understandably fond of him.)

They pass an easy, lazy afternoon in the sewer. By the time they leave that evening, Leela feels almost happy. Almost calm. The horror of the last two days is finally starting to fade.

All she has to do is keep Fry with her, watch him until the last seconds of this cursed day ebb away, and she'll have done it, she'll have won. She'll have saved him. The thought gives her strength.

"Stay with me," she blurts out, when they're standing outside her building and Fry is pulling his arm out of hers to head for home. Leela grips his forearm, holding him in place. He won't slip through her fingers again. Not like before. Not now she understands what she has to do.

"I don't feel like being alone tonight," she lies. "And it's still early. We could watch a movie."

Fry is frowning at her again, as if he knows she's gone off script but he doesn't know how to tell her that - how to put into words the many ways in which Leela has flipped their usual dynamic on its head, today.

"I have that 20th Century movie channel," Leela persists. "We could watch one of those cornball 80s movies you're always telling me I haven't lived until I've seen. Aliens, or Gremlin. Or Die Solid."

"Die Hard."

"Isn't that a porno?"

"No, it's a Christmas movie."

But Fry is smiling again, and Leela knows she has him.

"Okay," he says at last. "But I'm not watching any sequels. Unless it's Star Wars, and then I'm not watching any _prequels_."

"Deal," Leela tells him.

She puts her free hand in her pocket, so she can't give in to her sudden, strange desire to smooth his hair back and kiss him on the cheek. She feels giddy somehow, buoyed up by a surge of fondness for Fry. _You're safe_, she thinks. _I've saved you_. Her heart feels like it might burst.

The rest of the night passes easily. Comfortably.

They eat popcorn on her couch, and marathon ET and Alien (two _very_ different movies about extra-terrestrials), before they get to a movie about a dinosaur theme park gone horribly wrong (Leela enjoys its central premise, that all those dinosaurs would be better off if humans just left them the hell alone). This is followed by Die Hard, which it turns out is far more in keeping with the Xmas traditions Leela knows than the ones Fry tells her were typical in his time.

Leela begins to feel drowsy halfway through Hans Gruber's assault, but she hides it as best she can. She doesn't want Fry to notice and start trying to go home again. It's lucky, really, that Fry is such a movie nerd. He doesn't seem sleepy at all, and he hasn't suggested leaving again since they got here. All she has to do is keep him like this – distracted – and run out the clock. Easy.

They're watching some movie about a groundhog now. It crawls out of a hole in the ground and predicts when the winter will end. The jerkass newscaster who serves as this movie's main character doesn't seem too enamored of the critter, but Leela can't see what his problem is. The groundhog is cute, she thinks. Like a grumpy, beaverish version of Nibbler.

Her cheek is resting on Fry's shoulder. Her head has slumped without her noticing. Really, she should move. Just slide over.

But she's warm, and comfortable, and Fry has his arm around her.

"Leela?" he says softly. His breath tickles the top of her head. "Are you awake?"

"Okay," Fry murmurs, when she doesn't respond. He starts to pry her off, so he can get up.

Leela makes a noise of protest. It's more forceful in her mind, but she's not sure how well it translates in her half-asleep state. She has the embarrassing feeling she isn't forming words at all, just grousing weakly as she tries to keep him down. But Fry seems to heed her.

"Okay," he says again, almost a whisper. "I'll stay. I got you."

He dips his head, back to the crown of her hair, and she can feel him breathe in.

"Leela," he whispers, as if he wants to tell her something. Do his lips ghost across the top of her head? Or is she dreaming now, filling in the gaps in her consciousness with what she wants to hear?

"I saved you," Leela mumbles. Or does she only think it?

_I love you, Leela, _Fry tells her. And then she knows she's dreaming, but she no longer cares.


	4. Chapter 4

Leela awakes in her bed, alone. Hailstones are pinging against the window pane.

"Fry?" she calls. But only Nibbler responds, skittering out of the kitchen to fix her with a look of alarm.

Fry is gone. He was never here.

Leela didn't save him.

This time, when the hailstone smashes through her window, Leela is so furious she picks it up with her bare hands and hurls it out again, smashing a new hole in the window pane and showering glass down into the street.

Then she balls her hands into fists, pounds them against her thighs, and screams.

The scream seems to go on and on, a twisted horrible thing that feels as if it's being wrenched from the pit of her stomach.

Nibbler flees, terrified.

The neighbors are yelling when Leela stops at last. She can hear them through the walls - _"Crazy bitch", "It's a murder!"_ \- but she doesn't care. She screams some profanities at them and laughs, in a way even she feels might be borderline insane, while they threaten to call the cops.

Who cares if they do? It won't make any difference. Leela will spend the night in lock-up, or in the Serenity ward at Taco Bellevue Hospital, and then she'll wake up in the morning back in her own bed, screaming again because she couldn't save Fry.

Leela has always been cynical about organized religion – but she suddenly knows with certainty that there is a God after all. And he's an evil, sadistic bastard.

What kind of god would make a world like this? What kind of god would kill Fry?

With a piece of _candy_?

And what sick, twisted entity would make Leela relive it like this, over and over again? Will this time loop ever end? Is she dead? Is this some awful purgatory she has to live through, to make amends for failing to save Fry the first time? Leela remembers the searing pain in her chest, when Fry died. Maybe that wasn't just grief. Maybe she died in that moment too.

It says something, about what her life has become, that Leela thinks this almost hopefully. If she really is dead, then there is no way for her to save Fry. If they're both dead, then, well . . . maybe she can find him again.

Nibbler is back. He's scarpering down by her feet, making loud, anxious noises.

She's bleeding, Leela realizes. She stepped in broken glass.

The blood is uncomfortably convincing. And sure enough, when she moves her foot, pain streaks through it.

So much for being dead.

Illogically, this only makes her angrier.

Leela shoos Nibbler away, and grimly bandages her feet. Then she shoves them into her boots. She could almost swear her little furball winces at this, but Leela has no time for him. She has no time for any of this.

She needs _answers_.

* * *

The upside to being stuck in one endlessly repeating day, Leela soon realizes, is that she no longer has to worry about the consequences of her actions.

She pushes her way to the front of the line at the transport tube, and makes it to work in record time. Scruffy hasn't even loaded the ship yet.

"Scruffy's loadin' up a crate of needles," he mutters, as she passes.

Leela smiles at him – a frantic, insane smile that almost makes him drop the crate.

"Here," she says sweetly. "Let me take that."

The Professor is tinkering with something in his lab, and doesn't bother to look up as she enters the room. Amy and Hermes are sharing their morning coffee, arguing about some tv talent show.

"No way! Cutie-Pi should've won the makeover category for sure! That silicon top coat? She was like a whole new robot!"

"Well, my money's on the Lovecraftian Horror. It's increased its body mass by forty six per cent!"

"I guess the judges respond to confidence, huh?"

"And eldritch monsters from the dawn of time."

"Hi, Leela!"

"Hi, Amy."

Leela opens the hatch of the Professor's trash compactor, smiles brightly, and tips the crate inside. The sound of crunching fills the air.

Hermes and Amy gape at her, mouths open.

"That was the delivery," Amy says at last.

"3000 syringes, to the Sera system," Hermes agrees. "They had a net value of twenty one hundred Earthican dollars!"

Leela shrugs.

"Oops."

"Those were a extremely valuable experimental prototype!" the Professor cries. "You blibbering nitwit! Hermes! Fire her!"

Hermes shakes his head.

"Leela, this is no laughing matter. This is willful destruction of company property! That's a firing offense! What were you thinking?"

"That I'd rather be fired than make this bogus delivery. What were _you_ thinking, Hermes?" The rage is back now, pressing down on her like some ugly thing squatting on her chest. "Sending your crew to a dangerous hospital quadrant? Anything could happen to us! Do you even know what horrible diseases they have quarantined out there? Or how secure their quarantine is? How could you live with yourself, if something happened to one of us? _For twenty one hundred Earthican dollars? What's wrong with you?"_

Amy is still staring at her with that stupid, wide-eyed look.

"Leela, what are you talking about? It's just a hospital. Hospitals have sick people in them, that's how they work -"

Leela rounds on her. The rage is thick now, choking. She has to push the angry words out, just in order to breathe.

"What am I talking about? What are _you_ talking about? Trash tv? _Makeovers_? You think any of that _matters_? Wake up! The Professor may be senile, but you're supposed to be a _scientist -_"

"So? I don't see -"

"Of course you don't see," Leela snarls. "We're stuck in a repeating _time_ _loop_, and you don't see, none of you _see_ -"

"See what?"

_Fry._

The sight of him is like a blow to the chest. It knocks her off balance, as if he has temporarily knocked off the monster of her rage.

"Leela's lost it," Amy says.

"She's raving," Hermes agrees, and then the Professor complains about his prototypes and Bender laughs, and Leela . . .

She can't take her eye off Fry. He's just staring at her, looking worried and mildly confused. He can see through her, she realizes. Past the insane rage, to the hurt underneath. For one wild instant all she wants is to put it all aside, just step into his arms and let him hold her, like he did last night. She felt safe then. It all felt so easy. Fry was safe and the world made sense again. Now, though, it's spinning away from her.

"Are you okay?"

Leela jerks away before he can touch her. She can't handle that, not now.

She's on a mission.

"I'm fine," she says brusquely. "There's just something I have to do." She draws her gun. "Help me lock the crew in that observation chamber."

"What?"

Bender snorts - "Lady, you are _loco_" - but he shuts up quick when she levels the gun at him.

"Don't tempt me," she snarls. "Fry, get him in there. All of them, except Amy. And the Professor."

"What about me?"

Leela thinks a minute.

"You can get in the decon shower," she decides at last. No-one can hurt him if he's in there alone. And the glass is so thick it's almost soundproof. "I'll lock you in."

"Uh . . ."

"I'm your captain," Leela reminds him. "That was an order."

"You're fired!" Hermes cries. "Fry, mon, don't be an idiot."

Fry chews this over for a long time, as Leela keeps her gun level and the rest of the crew stare at him beseechingly. At last he sighs.

"She's my captain," he says. "And she gave me an order."

He shuffles the crew into the tiny observation room, apologizing as he goes.

"Sorry, Hermes. Sorry, Bender. Sorry, Scruffy."

"You are so whipped," Bender says furiously, as Fry shuts the door in his face and locks it.

Leela chains Amy and the Professor to their workstation, and then helps Fry into the decon shower.

The cut on his cheek is back, where the hailstone got him. Leela wipes off the blood, gently.

"I'll let you out," she promises. "I just need to keep you safe."

"From what?"

"You don't want to know." Leela shudders at the memory. "Trust me."

"I do," Fry says.

And then Leela slides the door over, and all she can see his face, staring out at her through a square of glass. As if he's back in his cryo-chamber, on the day they met.

His lips move, saying something she can't hear. Probably nothing.

Still, he can't hear her either, and that's comforting. Leela doesn't want him to know the truth.

The truth belongs to Amy and the Professor, people who might actually be able to save him. So Leela turns her back on him and starts to talk.

"We're in a time loop." She takes a deep breath. "This is Wednesday, but it's been Wednesday four times now. And none of you remember. None of you know. I feel like I'm going crazy."

"I''m not a doctor," Amy says cautiously, "but maybe it feels like that for a reason, Leela. I mean . . . it _looks_ like you're going crazy."

"Feh!" The Professor waves her off. "Crazy? You think a little outside the box, they call you crazy. Or senile. Or doo-la-la-lally, ohoho yes -"

Leela slams her fist down on the table.

"_I am not crazy!"_

She breathes deeply in the ringing silence that follows her words. Then she levels the gun again in her other hand, and tries to find a sense of calm.

"I'm not crazy. That is not up for debate. There _is_ a time loop, and I don't know why I'm the only one who can remember it, but I don't give a rat's ass anymore. I want you to fix it."

Amy glances at the Professor, who is still muttering to himself and doesn't seem to care overly much about Leela's breakdown. She sighs.

"If we look into it, will you put down the gun?"

It's a reasonable request, and Leela considers it.

"I'll lower it," she concedes at last.

Another sigh.

"Okay. Drama queen. Spleesh." Amy pulls a tablet and an e-pen towards her. "Fine, whatever. Start from the beginning. This time loop you say we're all in . . . how did it start?"

Leela shrugs.

"It's always the same. 8 am Wednesday morning. I wake up at the same time every day, reliving this day. It doesn't matter where I end the day before, or what time I go to sleep. It's always the same. 8 am. Those Momcorp hailstones crashing through my window."

"Huh. Well, that's interesting. And it does sound like a loop, right Professor?"

"What? No it doesn't! That's a highly atypical presentation of a time loop, you jelly-brained nincom-" He squeaks.

_Jelly-brained. _

Without meaning to, Leela has aimed the gun square at his head.

It take an effort to lower it again. The image of Fry, stark-white with blood running from his nose, feels branded onto the inside of her eyeball.

There is another awkward silence.

"Um," Amy says at last. "Actually, I was saying, that was really useful, Leela, but, um . . . maybe, if you could maybe, walk us through the first day? That would be even better. Because that must be when the loop started. If there is a loop. Which, hahaha, I totally think there is!"

Leela's head is starting to throb. She rubs her temple, then sneaks a look back at Fry under cover of her hand. He's still locked safe in the decon shower, unable to hear a thing. He does look agitated, but only because no-one will let him out or tell him what's going on.

"Fine." Leela swallows. "Fine. I'll tell you."

* * *

She tells it all, the story of that first black Wednesday, of the Sera system and the stupid, innocuous piece of candy. Of Fry's jumbled speech and the blood she couldn't stop, and how quickly it happened, how fast it was over, and how time seemed to move so impossibly slowly after. Of falling asleep at last, and waking only to relive it all again.

She can't look them in the eye as she says it. That would make it all feel too immediate. If she closes her eye she can still hear Amy back in her apartment, crying herself to sleep that first night, sobbing to Kif on the phone, _I love you, I love you, I can't imagine_. It's easier to tell the story staring at the shiny steel of the Professor's dissecting implements, and keeping her voice even, and pretending she feels nothing at all.

When she finishes she looks up to find Amy staring at her, her eyes huge and limpid with tears.

"Oh, _Leela," _she says. "That's _awful."_

Leela swallows back the lump in her throat.

"It's fine," she says brusquely. "I'm fine. I just need to fix it. I need you to fix it. And then it'll be as if this whole nightmare never happened."

"But . . . but Fry _died_." Amy's gaze is drawn to the decon shower, where Fry frowns in puzzlement at her mournful expression. "And you were with him," she says plaintively. "You had to watch it happen, and you couldn't save him. _Fry_."

Leela shifts uncomfortably. Maybe it's her imagination, but something in the way Amy says "Fry" makes it sound like she knows, knows there is a special category of awful labeled "Dead Fry" in Leela's mind, which is so much worse than anyone else's death would be.

But Amy can't know that. She doesn't know about Leela's coma dreams. No-one does. Not in this timeline, anyway.

Leela turns away from her – and finds herself staring through the glass into the observation room instead. They can hear her, she remembers. Fry can't, but they can.

Bender is staring at her. Something about his expression unnerves her. It feels too much like looking in a mirror. The robot looks fathomless and angry, and far, far out of his depth.

Bender may not remember, but Leela is suddenly sure he's the only person on the planet who knows how she feels.

They stare at each other until Leela can't stand it anymore and turns away again.

Amy and the Professor work on the problem late into the evening. Leela doesn't understand the tests they're running, and doesn't have the energy to ask. She doesn't even have the energy to talk, anymore. She feels as if she's running completely on empty, except for her rage. That rage – sudden, all-consuming, uncontrollable - sweeps over her at the smallest provocation and turns her into someone she doesn't recognize. Someone who hates everything and everyone. At times she even thinks she hates Fry, for daring to die and put her through this.

To keep it under control it she puts her gun down and stares resolutely at the ceiling, where nothing exists that could possibly set her off.

Eventually even Amy gives up attempting to talk to her.

Hours tick by, as if they mean anything anymore.

* * *

"Leela. _Leela_."

Amy is shaking her.

Leela hasn't been sleeping. Not exactly. She's just been switched off, staring up at the ceiling for who knows how long.

"You were right," Amy says. She still sounds half disbelieving, and the Professor – up to his elbows in glowing gold chronitons – gives a snort that suggests he doesn't believe her either.

"No, she wasn't!"

"You were half right," Amy amends. "There is a time loop. You're not crazy, it's really happening. But it's . . . complicated."

"Complicated?"

Amy winces.

"It's . . . okay, so, um . . . did we ever talk about universes?"

Leela considers.

"Parallel universes," she says at last. "Every decision we make in this universe creates a universe where it went the other way."

"Right," Amy says. "That's a good place to start. The thing you need to remember is, in the moment a parallel universe is created, the people inside it don't _know_ it was created. They have the exact same experience as the original universe, up to the point it changes. To them, that's reality. That's how it's always been. Like, to me, this is the only Wednesday. This universe where Fry is alive is the only universe. I wouldn't know any different if you hadn't told me."

"So we're in a parallel universe." Leela frowns. "I'm traveling through parallel universes somehow. Every version of this day, I'm living it."

"Hooey!" the Professor shouts. "Stop tip-tapping around and tell her the truth, dammit!"

"I'm building up to it!"

"Well, hurry up! I'm old! I don't want to die before you get to the point!"

Leela reaches for the gun, and they both shut up.

Amy throws her hands up.

"We're not in a parallel universe," she says quickly. "Leela, we're in a _bubble_ universe."

"A what?"

Amy sighs.

"This is why I tried to work up to it! I knew you wouldn't understand. Alright. I'll do a demonstration." She takes out a pot of bubble mix and unscrews the top. "This big bubble I'm blowing now, that's our universe. The way it was up until Wednesday."

She blows, slowly, stretching out the air to fill a huge shining bubble. And then, just before she stops the breath to seal it, she huffs out another quick puff. And a second bubble forms, a tiny blister swelling on the skin of the first.

"See the bubble?" Amy points. "_That's_ a bubble universe. It's like . . . a breakaway part of the original universe, made of all the same stuff, but smaller. It's not a parallel. Nothing happened differently in it. It's just . . . extra. Think of it like a clone. A little baby clone of the universe."

"It's a parasite," the Professor tells her. "Clinging to the original universe like a tick."

Amy rolls her eyes.

"My way was nicer." She must see that Leela is still confused, because she elaborates further. "Okay, so, the bubble universe is separate from the main one, right? You can see the wall, between these two bubbles here. They're the same, but separate. Each of them doesn't know the other one exists. But the bubble universe is . . . wrong, I guess. There's not enough inside it to sustain it. If it got too big, it'd pop. So it keeps itself small." She smiles nervously. "We got lucky. Some bubble universes keep themselves small by shrinking. They use up all the matter. They get smaller and smaller until they collapse in on themselves. But this bubble found another way. It's keeping itself alive by recycling _time_. The same day, over and over again."

Leela rubs her temple, trying to digest this.

"Why?" she asks at last. "Why would it do that? And why am I the only one who knows what's happening?"

"I don't know. It's a mystery." Amy casts a quick, nervous glance at the Professor, who is busy recalibrating a gigantic steel drum and seems to have lost interest in their conversation entirely. "It's not supposed to happen that way," she says in a lower tone. "So I guess . . . I guess it depends on what your take on the universe is. I mean, do you think it's all just a bunch of crazy random stuff that happens? Atoms bouncing off of atoms with no order to it? Because that's the scientific view. But then there's, you know . . . you can get spiritual about it. People do. I mean sometimes. All the time, really. They think there's a Creator out there, who made all of this. Who could be watching us, right now. Guiding us. And if you think that's true then maybe . . . maybe this bubble universe isn't an accident. Maybe it _is_ about Fry."

Leela stares. This isn't the explanation she expected from Amy.

"Let me get this straight," she says slowly. "You think the Creator of the universe personally stepped in so I could save Fry."

"Maybe."

"Amy, he's not Jesus."

"Maybe the universe owes him one."

"Uh-huh." Leela pinches the bridge of her nose. "Or maybe," she says scathingly, "there is a God, and he's trolling the hell out of all of us."

Amy sighs, and Leela feels driven to explain herself further.

"I _did_ save Fry," she reminds her friend. "And it didn't make a lick of difference. It didn't break us out of the time loop. What's the point in saving him every day if we can't ever go back to our lives? What kind of half-assed salvation is that?"

Amy has no answer to that.

"So how do we stop it?" Leela demands. "How do we bust out of this loop and get back to our own universe?"

There is a long, long silence. Amy is staring at her with that terrible expression of pity again.

"Leela," she says at last, "we're in the bubble universe."

"So?"

"So . . . the time loop is the only thing keeping the bubble universe in existence. If we break it, we stop existing."

"And wake up back in the main universe. I don't see the problem."

"The problem is it doesn't work like that. We're not the us from the main universe, not anymore. They're already living their reality. If we burst this bubble, we won't magically turn into them. We'll just die."

Leela opens her mouth to argue, but Amy is unstoppable now.

"And even if we _could_ wake up in that universe," she says, "you wouldn't want to. Leela, _that's the universe that kept going after Wednesday._ After the _first_ Wednesday." She shakes her head. "You wouldn't want to live in that universe."

Amy is still talking, but Leela can't hear her anymore. The blood is roaring in her ears, because she only knows one thing.

She never saved Fry. Oh, maybe she saved him today. And she can go on saving him, in the bubble of this endlessly repeating day. But somewhere out there - in the real world, where it really matters – she failed.

She could relive this day forever, and never undo that moment.

"- not so bad for us," Amy is saying, oblivious. "We won't even know it unless you tell us every day – Leela?"

Leela is on her feet.

"I understand," she says dully.

Break the time loop and she kills Fry all over again. Save him every day and he never truly lives.

She'll never win.

She stares through the decon shower at him, then slowly depresses the door. It opens with a pneumatic hiss and Fry tumbles out, unsteady on his feet after all this time. He searches her face.

"Did you figure it out? The thing?"

He sounds so hopeful. So completely oblivious to the truth.

Of course Leela will figure it out. Of course she'll save him. She always has before.

"No," Leela tells him.

"Oh." Fry chews his lip, mulling this over. "Well, maybe you just need more time."

Leela would laugh at that, if it didn't make her want to cry.

Fry glances over at Amy and the Professor, surrounded by scientific paraphernalia he doesn't understand.

"Maybe I could help. Be your guinea pig, or something."

He still looks so hopeful, so hesitant. _Maybe I could help. _

She doesn't know why she does what she does next, what impulse drives her to pull him in and kiss him, hard and fast, on the mouth.

She does it anyway.

And then Leela turns away and leaves the lab, where her friends are shouting after her. She doesn't know where she's going. It doesn't really matter. The faces on the street passing her are a blur. The blood is still roaring in her ears. Above the sound she can hardly hear Fry, shouting her name. Or the sound of the traffic.

"Leela, wait!"

Brakes scream. Fry screams.

Leela should be screaming too, but there isn't enough air left in her lungs for that.

She doesn't feel it when the hovercar hits her, but she does feel it when she hits the sidewalk. What is that? Adrenaline? Some kind of delayed reaction?

Leela observes this oddity from the outside, feeling strangely detached from the pain. She feels cold, and breathless, still. Drowning, she imagines, must feel like this.

_You're dying, _she tells herself.

Blue and red light strobes against the night sky, but she can't hear sirens, and that's another thing that seems odd and out of place. Dying, it turns out, is confusing.

At least Fry is here.

"Don't talk," he says. "Don't try to talk," because she is talking, apparently.

"Fry," she tells him, because he's here, and "I'm sorry, Fry", because it seems like something he should know.

It feels like a bad joke, dying on a sidewalk with Fry clinging to her hand. He's crying, and that strikes her as profoundly unfair.

_Don't do that, _she wants to tell him. _It's not real, Fry. _

She dies before she can.


	5. Chapter 5

Leela lies in bed, listening to the hailstones rattle against her windowpane, and wonders how it feels to die a real death.

Oh, her death yesterday felt real enough. There was pain. Confusion. That creeping sensation of cold – that was the worst, she knows she'll wake up feeling that steal over her after every nightmare for the rest of her life. But the moment of death itself? It seemed all wrong somehow. There was no bright light, no sense of being pulled into a tunnel, or floating above her body. Leela can't help but feel she got a bargain basement version of death. It seemed absurdly fast. And dark. Too dark. One minute she was lying on the ground wishing Fry would stop crying, the next . . . blackness, that snuffed her out like a candle.

And now here she is again, at 8am on Wednesday morning, lying in the shards of glass from a broken window.

Leela shakes the glass off her comforter. Hail and glass glitters on the floor. Cold air blasts into the room through the hole in the window.

She should fix that. Sweep up the glass, tape some newspaper over the hole.

Leela sits and stares, the cold slowly turning her cheeks numb.

On the other side of the bed, Nibbler is whining to be fed.

It all seems like a huge, pointless effort.

"Feed yourself," she tells him.

And then she drops back onto the mattress and pulls the blankets over her head.

* * *

Her communicator rings, and rings, and rings. Eventually Leela tears it off her nightstand and hurls it across the room. It lands hard, and doesn't ring again.

Nibbler burrows into her cocoon of blankets and sinks his teeth into the hem of her nightshirt, trying to tug her out of bed. Leela lies there like a log and lets him try.

Eventually he gives up and curls into a ball on her stomach, chittering in agitation.

Leela can't even summon the energy to pet him.

* * *

Someone is knocking at her door.

Leela lies and ignores the sound for a long time.

It gets more insistent.

She sticks her head under the pillow and ignores it some more. In the end, it stops.

Somehow, she manages to sleep. It seems easier than dealing with reality. She sleeps, and sleeps, relishing the empty nothing of it.

Her plan to spend the whole day in this way is disrupted by Bender jacking the lock on her front door.

"See?" the robot says disparagingly. "I _told_ you she was alive, dingus."

"Leela?" Fry looks almost as agitated as Nibbler. "Are you okay? You didn't show up for work, and you _always_ show up for work. Even when there's nothing to do. And then you didn't answer when I called you, or when I called you again on Amy's phone, or when I called you on Zoidberg's phone. But that was just a clam he drew numbers on, so I only left you a message on that."

Bender snorts.

Fry is too worked up to notice.

"And then I knocked on your door and you still didn't answer, and I started to worry. I started to think maybe something happened to you. Like when old Mrs Henderson died and no-one knew. And then two weeks later Mr Guthrie jimmied open her window and hamsters were eating her face."

Leela sighs.

"Hamsters don't eat human flesh, Fry."

Her voice sounds hoarse and scratchy from disuse.

But Fry's face lights up anyway.

"Maybe they were rats," he concedes. He breathes a huge sigh of relief. "I'm glad you're okay. What happened to your window?"

"Hail." Full sentences still feel like an effort. "Don't go over there."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, glass." Fry rocks back on his heels. He does that when he's nervous, rocking back and forth to burn off the excess energy. "We got the weird hailstones too. Me and Bender. They scratched Bender's finish."

_And they cut you, _Leela thinks. The nick on his cheek is back, as always. He doesn't seem to have noticed it bleeding.

"Come here."

Leela takes his hand and pulls him down to sit on her bed. She wipes the blood away with the ball of her thumb.

"You're bleeding," she says, by way of explanation.

Fry swallows.

"Thanks," he tells her. His voice is several octaves out of its normal range. He coughs. "Are you okay?"

Leela shrugs. She doesn't know what she is, anymore.

"Are you sick?"

He looks so concerned.

Leela sighs.

"I just didn't want to come in today."

"Why not?"

"You wouldn't understand."

Bender – rifling through her bedside locker – snorts.

"That's code for _lady_ _times_," he says knowledgeably.

"No, it isn't. Cram a cork in it, Bender. And get out of my drawer."

The robot slams the drawer in a huff. But not before Leela sees him whisk a contact lens and a neck massager into his compartment.

"That's the last time I break down your door to save _you_ being eaten by cockroaches."

"He doesn't mean that," Fry says hurriedly.

Leela rubs her temple.

"I really don't care if he does."

Bender flips her the bird and then picks Nibbler up and moves off to see what he can steal from the kitchen. When Leela makes no attempt to stop him, Fry frowns.

"Are you sure you're not sick? Because we broke your door and Bender stole your neck doohickey, and normal Leela would be going berserk round about now."

Leela lets go of his hand, suddenly feeling exhausted again.

"It doesn't matter. None of it matters, Fry." She rubs her forehead. "I just want to be alone right now."

Fry looks deeply alarmed now.

"Right," he says. "Yeah. I get that. Only, uh . . . don't take this the wrong way, but you don't look like that's such a good idea." He swallows. "Maybe you want to be alone," he tries, "but you _need_ to be with someone. Like . . . a friend." He hesitates. "I could stay, if you want. I could send Bender away, and I could just . . . stay. And if you wanted to talk, you could talk to me. Maybe."

There is a long silence. Leela can hear Bender in the distance, rattling around in her cupboards.

Fry is staring at her, wide-eyed and worried. His eyes are very blue. Funny, really, that Leela has never noticed it before. Most blue eyes are grayish or greenish, but Fry's are true blue, as bright and light as the sky in summer. There's something soothing about the color. If hope had a color, Leela thinks, that's the shade it would be.

What a strange thought to have.

She's so tired.

Maybe it's that that makes her nod. Or maybe she just can't face another day like this alone.

Either way, she loses herself in his gaze, a little, and nods, and tells him "Stay."

* * *

To her relief, Fry doesn't push her on the reason for her meltdown. He falls back instead on treating her as if she's sick. This seems odd at first, but the more Leela considers it, the more it makes sense. To Fry, she must seem sick. Her bone-deep exhaustion has no motivating factor he can explain, and her sudden listlessness flies in the face of everything he's ever known from her.

Leela tries to remember a time she was ever this emotionally deadened before, and comes up blank. Her coma, maybe. But that hardly counts. She was unconscious then, after all.

She makes an effort to seem more alive. She brushes her teeth, and follows him to the kitchen after he gets rid of Bender. It's not much – her hair is still a snarling mess, and she can't find the energy to shower or change into anything other than her nightshirt. But Fry smiles like a sunburst at the sight of her, and suddenly she wishes she could do more. Wishes she could be the Leela he wants her to be.

She thinks of Amy, calling her "catatonic" that first night. Of Fry, pale and still in his hospital bed on the second night. In the real timeline, Fry sat by her bedside for two weeks. He endured two weeks of that waking nightmare. Leela doesn't know how he survived it. If her coma dream left a mark on her – instilling her with a paralyzing fear of Fry's death – what did those two weeks do to Fry? What is he most afraid of, now?

He's talking again, babbling away about Bender and the food he ordered, and the curative powers of flat soda. That diverts his attention somehow to 20th Century foodstuffs you just can't get in the future, and on to a time he tried to make Coca-Cola in Bender and blew a hole in the floor of their apartment, and back around to the pipes flooding, and then he's talking about Bender's feud with the apartment super and . . .

Leela sips her flat Slurm, and quietly marvels at Fry's ability to just . . . _keep talking_. Ceaselessly. She knows from experience now that this is harder than it looks, but it seems to come so naturally to him. There's something comforting about it. It's hard to hold the image of dead Fry in her head, not when he's standing in front of her like this, filling the air with incomprehensible nonsense.

_Slow down, _she'd tell him normally. _One concept at a time, Fry. Stick to the topic. _She's been doing it for so long she's almost forgotten why she does it – just how quickly Fry's attention will plunge off-track without a little gentle guidance. He's like a runaway train.

It's hard to say how long he talks like this for. Half an hour, maybe. Leela doesn't contribute much, but Fry seems happy enough that she's watching him, sipping her Slurm and following along with his stories with an expression that maybe isn't too far from the blank look they normally get.

Eventually the food arrives. Fry is clearly still following a thought process that says Leela must be sick in some way, because he's ordered some kind of Neptunian broth, with spice weasel dumplings. Leela isn't hungry, but Fry did pay, and it seems unkind not to at least try to eat. To her surprise, her appetite awakens at the first bite.

"It's good," she says. Then, "Thank you."

This must be the first contribution to the conversation she's made in an hour. It shocks Fry so much he slops soup down the front of his shirt and turns beet red.

"For staying," Leela goes on, in case he missed her meaning. On reflection, it did sound like she was just talking about the soup. And she is grateful for it, now. But the soup is only part of it. "You don't have to spend your day like this," she tells him.

Fry stares at her as if she's speaking in tongues.

"You'd do the same for me," he says.

He sounds so sure, and Leela feels her appetite ebb away suddenly as she stares down at her dumplings.

"Would I?"

Her life before the time loop feels so far out of view. Already, Leela struggles to remember the thoughts and motivations of her past self. Would she have come around to care for Fry like this? Was she that selfless? That open with him? It bothers her that she can't remember.

Fry is staring at her again, as if he thinks they're living in two different realities.

"Of course," he says slowly. "Leela, you're the best person I know. And you'd never give up on a friend. If I needed your help, you'd help me. Even if I didn't want you to. That's the kind of person you are."

"What if I couldn't help you?"

"What?"

"What if you needed my help and I couldn't help you?"

Fry laughs.

"That wouldn't happen."

Leela pushes her food away, feeling sick now.

"I'm serious, Fry. What if I couldn't help you? What if I couldn't save you?" She gives a brittle laugh. "Would I still be the best person you know?"

There is a long, long silence.

And then Fry reaches out, and carefully wraps his fingers around the hand still holding her fork.

"Of course," he says.

* * *

They're sitting on the couch, watching the 20th Century movie channel again. Leela can feel the day slipping away like water through cupped hands, but for the first time she feels no need to fight it. What does it matter if she falls asleep? What does it matter if this day ends early? Tomorrow she'll just live it all again.

For the first time, that doesn't seem like such a horrifying prospect.

She rests her head on Fry's shoulder during Die Hard, and his arm settles around her, unspoken.

It's easy. It's comfortable.

She feels like she can breathe.

"Leela?"

"Mmm?"

Fry breathes in, gentle.

"We can talk, if you want to."

Leela considers it. At last, she sighs.

"There really is no point, Fry."

"Why?"

"Because it doesn't matter."

"Why?"

"Because . . ." Leela sighs again. "You wouldn't understand."

Fry frowns.

"That's what you said before," he says. "And . . . you're probably right. But that never stopped you telling me stuff before." He hesitates. "It might make you feel better."

Leela shuts her eye, resting her forehead against the spot on his chest where she can feel Fry's heart pound slow and steady through his shirt.

Eventually she drags her head up and looks him square in the eye.

"We're in a time loop."

"A what?"

"A time loop. In a bubble universe. We keep living the same day over and over, and I'm the only one who remembers. I'm going crazy, Fry."

"You're not crazy. You're the least crazy person I know."

It's oddly touching, that this is the part of her confession Fry focuses on first. There is a pause as he digests the rest of it.

"How many times has it been today?" he asks at last.

"Five, so far."

"Five todays?"

"Yes."

"So it's like Groundhog Day?"

"What?"

"The movie." Fry gestures at the television. "It's always the same day, and he can't break out of it."

Leela stares at the screen, affronted.

_"There's a movie about this?"_

"There's a movie about everything," Fry says cheerfully.

Leela watches the weatherman yell at some poor stranger on screen, curious.

"How does he break out of it?"

Fry shrugs.

"I don't know. It just stops at the end of the movie. But he lives the day a bunch of times. Five hundred, maybe. Or five million."

Leela shudders.

"That sounds awful."

To her surprise, Fry shakes his head.

"No, it's not so bad," he says. "He learns how to do ice sculpture, and piano, and he gets really good at it. And he saves people. A homeless guy, and a boy falling out of a tree, and . . . I don't know, there's other stuff. But he lives the day like it's perfect, and he's happy. In the end, I mean. He's not happy at the start. He takes his toaster in the bath."

Leela snorts.

"I know the feeling," she says wryly. "Let's watch it," she decides.

Like most of Fry's Stupid Ages movies, the movie surprises Leela with its sophistication. Phil Connors is a jerk, just like she first thought, but he grows into someone better. And the movie isn't just a comedy, she notes. It's a love story too, and she finds it interesting that Fry left that out. Phil Connors spends the whole movie trying to win the heart of his love interest. But he only succeeds when he finally grows a heart himself, and surrenders to his fate.

Groundhog Day is a fiction, Leela knows. Acceptance isn't the key to unlocking her own time loop. She'll never have the happy ending Phil Connors gets, waking up in bed with Rita by his side on a glorious new day.

But acceptance, she realizes, could be the key to retaining her sanity.

It's 3 am. Time is running out on her day.

"I've been looking at this all wrong."

She shakes her head.

She's been so focused on her failure to save Fry, she's been missing the big picture. Sure, she couldn't save Fry in the real timeline. She can't undo that awful day, and she'll always carry the scars of it with her. But she can save Fry now. She can go on saving Fry, every day, even if he doesn't know it. She can give him something almost like a life.

She can't give him tomorrow.

But she can give him today. As many todays as this universe contains.

He's asleep, she realizes. Her mouth twitches in a smile as she smooths his hair.

"Goodnight, Fry."

She kisses his forehead – a light touch that won't wake him – and settles down beside him again, to watch the closing credits of the movie flicker on the screen.


	6. Chapter 6

**_"_****_And the last age should show your heart." _**

* * *

8 am. Leela's eye snaps open in the instant the hailstone crashes through her window.

She lies still, feeling strangely at peace. Cold air whips into her bedroom as it has done every day, but today it doesn't make her shiver. It feels bracing, alive.

She leaves the glass where it lies and heads to the bathroom instead, where she showers, long and slow. After, she wipes the fog from the mirror and searches the reflection of her own face.

She looks calm. Not happy, exactly, but . . . present. Collected.

Today, she decides, is going to be her day.

Nibbler is whining for his second ham in the kitchen when she stops to pick up her keys. Leela hauls him up by the scruff of the neck and fixes him with a stern look.

"Knock it off," she tells him. "You and I both know" - she bops him on the nose - "you already ate."

She scratches him fondly behind one ear, then sets him down and tosses him a treat, because she's always been a sucker for that face.

"You're lucky I love you. You master manipulator, you."

She leaves him with one final kiss.

* * *

The hailstones whip at her as she makes her way down the street, but Leela can't find it in herself to complain. They're just as invigorating as she'd hoped they'd be, and she finds herself smiling now, as she sucks a lungful of air into her chest. Cold weather freshens the city, makes it seem clean and new somehow.

It's a new day – a new world – and it belongs to her.

Amy is just where Leela knew she would be – down in the lab with Hermes, talking about that stupid reality show.

When Hermes goes to pour himself a cup of instant, Leela pushes his hand out of the way.

"Don't drink that slop. I brought the good stuff."

"Columbian Java?" Hermes grasps the proffered cup as if it's the elixir of life. He takes a draft. "Mmm, mon, that's what I call a caffeinated beverage! Leela, if I hadn't abolished the employee of the month scheme for its negligible impact on employee morale, I'd make you employee of the month for this!"

Leela smiles. Considering her friend awarded "Hermes Conrad" employee of the month January straight through to December last year . . .

"I'll take that as a compliment. Thank you, Hermes."

She untucks the box of donuts from under her arm.

"And Amy, these are for you."

"Donuts?" Amy flips open the box lid. "_Pink_ donuts? Aw, with teensy little sugar unicorns!"

"And candy-cane flavored creme," Leela confirms. "It was the most nauseatingly saccharine food purchase I've ever made. I almost couldn't go through with it at all. But it was this or a Lovey Bear. In the end it felt like the lesser of two evils."

Amy is staring at her, open-mouthed.

"You got these for me? But . . . why?"

Leela shrugs.

"No special reason. It just occurred to me that I never tell you what a good friend you are. I know I can be hard to get along with. I've never had female friends, and obviously, I have some significant trust issues. But I can see it now. That under all those snarky comments about my shoe size and my taste in clothes, you really do care. You really do try. I never tell you how much I appreciate that, and it suddenly struck me that I should."

"Um." Amy blinks at her. "I don't know what to say, Leela. You're not, like, terminally ill, are you?"

"No."

"Oh. Then, thanks!" Amy grins. "You're a good friend too. Even if you won't let me give you a fabulous makeover."

Leela laughs.

"Who knows? Maybe someday. Just for fun."

"Yes!" Amy fist-pumps the air in triumph. She picks up a donut. "Hey, are these non-fat?"

Leela snorts.

"Amy," she says seriously. "You know as well as I do that no donut worth eating is non-fat." She claps her friend on the shoulder. "Take my advice," she says. "Live a little. Just for one day."

* * *

"Bender! Get your shiny metal butt over here."

"Whatever I did," Bender says immediately, "you can't prove I did it!"

Leela sighs.

"Don't be so defensive. I just want to talk."

"Yeah right."

"I'm serious. I need you to take today's delivery solo."

Bender folds his arms.

"No way. You do it."

Leela fixes him with her best stern look.

"I can't," she tells him. "I need some time alone with Fry."

Bender's eye beams almost bug out of his head.

"Time _alone?" _

Leela clears her throat and tilts her chin a little higher, affecting indifference.

"You heard me. Time alone. Just me and Fry. It's important."

"Important how?"

Bender looks deeply suspicious, and Leela knows she's only going to make it worse. But she can't help that.

"You wouldn't understand," she tells him. "It's . . . personal."

"That's what Fry said when I read all that mushy stuff about you in his diary." Bender narrows his eyes. "You meatbags better not be doing anything gross and fleshy. With your faceholes. Or your _appendages_." He shudders. "I know what goes down with humans!"

Leela makes a private note to investigate this _diary_ thing another day, and whacks the robot on the arm, annoyed.

"There won't be any appendages involved. I just want a conversation with him, Bender."

"Su-uure."

Leela folds her arms, considering.

"If you agree to do this," she says at last, "I won't say anything if you make a little stop at Robot Repair enroute. I might even be persuaded to pay for someone to buff out those dents on your chassis." She pulls out her wallet, peeling through banknotes in a languid way. "If you stayed away all day, who knows? I might even feel generous enough to shell out for the Deluxe Topcoat Treatment. _With full body polish."_

"On second thoughts," Bender says smoothly, "you _are_ my second favorite human, and if you and Fry wanna get freaky, who am I to judge?"

"That's what I thought you might say." Leela hands over the cash, smiling. "Hey, Bender?"

The metal of his casing is warmer than she expects, when she hugs him. It thrums and whirs as she squeezes, and he grumbles, "What's the big idea?"

"I forgive you," Leela tells him.

"For what?"

Leela smiles – sad, but not as sad as she expected. It feels like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders, as if she has let go of something she didn't even realize she'd been carrying up to now.

"_I_ know," she tells him. And that's enough.

* * *

Bender drops them off at Monument Beach, as Leela asked. She can't explain why she wanted to come here, of all places. It's not even summertime. The hail has ebbed away, out here, but the sky is still iron gray and the waves are choppy and cold. Even the sand beneath their feet is dull and muddy.

_I wish I could give you a summer day, _Leela thinks sadly, watching Fry's jacket flap in the wind. Fry deserves that. But right now, Monument Beach in November is the best she can do.

Fry is watching her too, she realizes. Watching her hair whip in the breeze. He's not smiling, not precisely, but there's a softness at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes.

Normally Leela tamps that down. She always met his gaze with a challenge, before, when she sensed him staring like this. Always barked out some order, or changed the subject. She has always been so afraid of that look of Fry's. Of what it might mean.

She wasted so much time, being afraid.

"I need to tell you something," she tells him now. "And ask you something, I think." She puts a hand on his chest, to quiet him. "But you can't ask me any questions. Not until I'm finished."

Fry opens his mouth, then shuts it. Nods.

Leela smiles.

"Good."

She curls her hand around his and tugs him down onto the sand, to sit beside her.

She takes a deep breath. _Here goes. _

"We're stuck in a time loop," she says. "And I'm the only one who remembers it."

She talks until her throat goes hoarse. And goes on talking, because there is so much to say, and she wants to make sure Fry understands all of it.

She tells him about that first Wednesday, the awful moment when he died. How she failed to save him. How he tried to tell her something, before the end, and how it tortures her that she'll never know what that was. She tells him about Amy and Bender trying to comfort her that night, and finally, falling asleep with Fry's jacket over her shoulders, in an eerie echo of her coma.

She tells him about the second Wednesday. How slow she was to react to this do-over. How she didn't understand what was happening until it was too late. She tells him about _his_ coma, and how she finally understood how he must have felt, all those days she lay unresponsive in her own hospital bed. She tells Fry everything she remembers telling him then, in her desperate attempt to keep him together. To bring him back to her, somehow. She tells him about Bender playing back her words, and about falling asleep when she just couldn't keep her eye open any longer. Holding his hand like a lifeline, as she felt herself sink.

She tells him about the third Wednesday. She actually laughs, recounting her all her terrible excuses. Her need to keep him near her, because she was so sure she'd figured it out. She tells him about their visit to her parents, about popcorn on her couch and their movie marathon, all those strange 20th Century classics she was so oddly endeared by. She tells him how happy she felt in those final moments, so convinced she'd saved him.

How angry she'd been, to realize it wasn't true. How she'd gone in search of answers, and found them. She explains it all, even though she can tell from his expressions that the _why_ of the time loop is going over Fry's head. She doesn't mind. It doesn't matter. There are more important things to tell him. Like dying on day four, and realizing the only thing she cared about in that moment was the pain her death was causing him.

The last day is the hardest to tell. Leela has never found it easy to share her own vulnerability with anyone, and she has never felt more exposed than she does now, opening herself up and telling Fry about the emptiness she felt that morning. The sheer _exhaustion_. She tells him how pointless life had seemed to her – how she even felt cheated out of a real death. How she'd been unable to see a way forward, and unable to see a way out . . . and then he had shown up at her door, and suddenly it all seemed easier to bear.

She tells him about the movie Groundhog Day, and her sudden, beautiful epiphany.

"Do you believe me?"

Fry stares down at their hands, still clasped together in the sand.

Leela squeezes his fingers, and he nods.

"I believe you," he says hoarsely. He swallows. "Can I ask questions now? Because I have questions. A lot of questions." He blinks rapidly. "About a lot of things. Like that thing you said about how you died one day. I have a lot of questions about that."

Leela squeezes his hand again.

"That's fair," she says. "But I'm not done yet. I need to ask you something, remember?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

Leela takes a deep, steadying breath.

"It's about my coma," she says. "You remember my coma."

"Yeah. I mean, I remember most of it. Eventually the sleep deprivation kicked in and I started feeling like the whole world was made of cotton candy, but I remember the important stuff. And Bender filled me in on the stuff I forgot. And the stuff I was asleep for. I tried not to sleep at all, I swear I did! But it turns out you can't do that for two weeks, no matter how much coffee you drink. So I got Bender to talk to you during those times. Once I think he sang."

Leela shudders.

"I think he might have."

"It was weird."

"It was even weirder for me, believe me."

Leela wets her lips, and tastes salt. She goes on.

"I don't remember everything," she admits. "Those two weeks were . . . confusing, to me. But I could hear you talking. Like I told you, it got through. _You_ got through, Fry. But I couldn't always understand what I was hearing. I couldn't even be sure it was real, some of the time."

She takes a deep breath, steels herself.

"Do you remember the day I woke up?"

Fry goes still. His hand twitches in hers, nervous.

And suddenly, Leela knows.

"Do you know what finally broke through to me?" she asks him.

She touches his cheek, grazing her thumb over the mark left by the hailstone. The blood is dry, now, and Fry doesn't even seem to have noticed it.

Fry swallows.

"No," he says hoarsely.

"No?" Leela raises her eyebrow. It's almost funny, now that she knows the truth. _Oh, Fry. _"You can't think of anything different about that moment?" she prods, gently.

Fry's throat bobs, and for the first time he looks away from her.

"I was giving up," he admits at last. "It felt like . . . like all the doctors were right. Like you were never gonna wake up." He shakes his head. "I kept telling them they were wrong. They didn't know you, they didn't know how strong you were. You wouldn't ever give up. And I kept believing that, for two whole weeks, Leela, but then, that day . . . they said you were losing brain function. And they started talking about taking you out of the hospital and _making you comfortable_ somewhere, and then Amy told me what that meant and started asking me what I thought you'd want. About turning off the machines."

His hand twitches again.

Leela tries to imagine that hand hovering over her life-support switch. She wonders if Fry could have actually done it.

She wonders if even he knows the answer to that.

"I tried to be strong," he tells her. "But when you woke up, I was just begging you to come back. I needed you." He stares at his feet. "I couldn't imagine my life without you."

Leela nods.

"I think I know how that feels." She feels oddly calm, now. "The doctors were right," she says. "I was giving up, Fry. I was so confused, and all I wanted was to escape it all and sleep forever. With you." She looks him in the eye, and smiles. "In my dreams you were dead, you see. If I slept, I'd be with you forever. And I wanted that more than anything. Except," - she laughs dryly - "you wouldn't stop begging me to wake up, and eventually, it felt like maybe I should listen to you."

Fry reddens.

"I'm glad you did."

"Me too. But the strangest thing happened as I was waking up. Before the time loop, I convinced myself it was all part of the dream and tried not to think about it too hard. But now, I think it was real. I think it gave me the strength to come back."

"Oh?" Fry quavers.

Leela smiles, a real smile now.

"Yes," she says firmly. "You told me you loved me, you see. And it's about time I admitted I love you too."

Fry looks on the cusp of hyperventilating.

"Breathe, Fry," Leela whispers.

And then - because she's waited too long and it seems as good a time as any – she leans in and catches him in a kiss.

Fry's hand tightens on hers in the sand, and his breathing evens out, and as his arm comes up around her to pull her closer he rests his forehead against her own.

"I don't care if I'm dead," he murmurs. "I don't care if we're stuck in this day for the rest of time. I'd stay with you forever."

* * *

**A/N: ****One last chapter to go! I had this story entirely pre-written, and then I turned around and decided to go in a different direction with the epilogue. Which was fine, but required a major rewrite / restructuring of this chapter to fit.**

**In**** the original version of the story, this chapter was the "happy ending", and the epilogue that followed was just a series of fun vignettes showing you what Fry and Leela's future would look like. They never break the time loop, Fry has to be reminded of the truth every day, and Leela accepts that and has fun with it. It was a little bit Groundhog Day, a little bit 50 First Dates. It was a fine ending. It was a nice ending, and I don't think anyone would have had any issue with it.**

**So**** why did I change it? The truth is that as people began to read the story and give me feedback on it, I began to realize they were connecting emotionally with it on a level beyond what I'd expected. More than one reader shared with me that they were in tough times and related all too well to Leela's emotional journey. And as they did so, I began to realize the fluffy ending I had planned for the fic initially now felt wrong.**

**Leela has earned her happy ending, sure . . . but happiness isn't a moment. It's a process, with highs and lows along the way, after the curtain falls. The more I thought about it, the more I felt there was value in showing that. The more I felt my readers deserved something . . . more.**

**So**** I did what I do best, and wrote more. In the form of an epilogue about half the length of the preceding fic.**

**Ah well. Que sera sera. :'D**


	7. Epilogue

**Day #7**

Fry falls over his own feet, when he opens the apartment door to find Leela waiting on his doorstep.

"Leela?"

She catches him, smiling.

"Hi there."

"Hi!" Fry says. His voice drops back into a more normal range. "Uh. Hey, Leela."

He's out of breath, staring at her half in a daze, and all of a sudden Leela could kick her past self. How many times has he looked at her like this? How many times did he short-circuit like this, out of the blue? And she always wrote it off as a brain freeze, as Fry just being Fry, when the truth is, he's reacting to her.

It's her, smiling at him, that has this effect on him.

Bender interrupts this epiphany by appearing over Fry's shoulder and snorting, "Who put happy pills in your Admiral Crunch?"

Leela smacks him upside the head. It's the only acceptable response.

While Fry is laughing she pulls out her wallet and tosses it at Bender.

"Here. Take it," she tells him. "Consider this a one-time free pass at my credit cards. There's some cash in there too. Go nuts."

"_You're_ nuts." Bender flips open the wallet, inspecting the expiry on her AmEx card. "What's the catch?"

Leela still has her hand on Fry's arm. He doesn't seem to have noticed. But he notices when she slides her hand down his forearm and tangles her fingers in his.

She keeps her eye on Bender's face.

"Get out of here. And don't come home until tomorrow."

* * *

Fry lets her lead him into the apartment. Lets her lead him to the couch and push him gently down.

He lets her wipe the blood from his cheek, and lets her climb onto his lap, and stares at her like a man under a spell as his hands find her waist and her fingers trace his cheek.

He swallows.

"Um, Leela? I want to be clear. I'm into this. So into it. Totally digging . . ." He makes an ineloquent gesture in the space between them. "This. Just, uh . . . what is this? Because I'm not sure."

Leela sighs.

"You know that movie Groundhog Day? We're in Groundhog Day, Fry. I'm Phil Connors, and you're my Rita."

Fry blinks.

"I am?"

"It's a long story. You died. I died. The universe . . ."

"Did Bender die?"

"Bender was fine."

Fry considers this.

"Was there a groundhog involved? Was Nibbler the groundhog?"

"I'll explain everything," Leela promises. "But first . . ."

She tips his chin up and kisses him, slow and sure, drawing every second from it. Fry gasps for air when she pulls away, but he makes a low, desperate sound all the same and draws her back, fixing his mouth to hers as if he needs that more.

_U LEAVE ME BREATHLESS, _Leela thinks, dizzily. Fry had it right, that Valentine's Day.

She cups his face, one hand braced against his shoulder. His eyes are blue, and wide open, and still a little confused.

Leela feels she should clarify things for him.

"I love you," she says softly.

She peels off her tank top, her gaze still locked on his. Then she reaches back, unclasps her bra, lets it fall to the floor.

This is the point where she should feel vulnerable. Exposed. Hyper-aware of every flaw.

Instead Leela feels completely calm.

She leans in again, and breathes in his ear, "_So love me too."_

* * *

**Day #42**

They go to visit Leela's parents in the sewer.

"Let's do something nice for my parents," Leela tells him, and on this occasion it turns out Fry's idea of something nice is to paint every room in her parents' house.

Leela picks the color – sunburst orange – and smiles when they crack open the paint cans.

"It's perfect," she declares.

"It's beautiful," her mother says. "We've never had fresh paint."

Her father only raises his eyebrow.

"Who are you, and what did you do with my daughter?"

Paint drips down onto her shoe, and Leela feels her smile widen.

"Nothing, Dad," she says. "I'm happy, that's all."

It's not _all_. Not at all. It's happiness, and that's not something Leela ever thought she could have. Not in this universe, anyway. Maybe not even in her life before.

It's a small miracle to have found it here.

Leela thinks this as she watches Fry coat the opposite wall in haphazard brush strokes.

He's humming to himself, that Sonny and Cher song she used to think was so goofy. His hair is speckled with paint.

Leela wonders if she'll tell him today.

Some days she doesn't. Some days it's enough just to be near him. To be _happy_, like this.

Other days . . .

She bends back the neck of her paintbrush and spatters the back of his shirt in bright orange.

Fry yelps.

"Hey! You did on that purpose!"

"Yes." Leela smirks. "Yes, I did."

She steps forward and taps him on the chest with the head of her brush, so that a small sunburst blooms over his heart.

"I wanted to tell you something."

"'Kay." Fry watches her with that goofy half-smile, waiting for the joke.

Leela steps into his arms, and squeezes him tight.

"You make me happy," she says simply. "I don't tell you that enough. But you really do, Fry."

Fry hugs back, and Leela feels the paint stains squelch between them, sticking them together like glue. She doesn't care.

"You make me happy too," Fry tells her. He pauses. "I think we're stuck."

"Oh, probably." Leela smiles, and squeezes tighter. "I don't mind. There are worse things to be."

* * *

**Day #493**

They're lying in a sweaty heap on the floor of Leela's apartment. There is a cold breeze blowing in through the window Leela never seems to get around to fixing, and Bruce Willis is blowing things up on the TV behind her. The neighbors stopped banging on the walls an hour ago.

Fry props himself up on one arm. His other hand is following the curve of her bare hip, the dip of her waist, the swell of her breast.

"How many times have we done this?"

"This?" Leela gestures to the floor, to the apartment around them. "Or this?" She bites her lip, shifts position so he can map out the rest of her. Her eyelid flutters shut.

She hears Fry swallow.

His lips brush her throat, the pulse point under her collarbone, the plane of her stomach.

"This," he says. "You and me. Like this."

"Honestly?" Leela shrugs. "I lose count."

"And you always feel like this?"

"Mmm."

Leela shifts again, writhing under him. She drags her mind back to the present, forces herself to remember that for Fry, this is the first time. It's always the first time.

"Yes," she manages. "Yes." She laughs. "Always."

Fry sinks into her so suddenly she gasps.

"I wish I remembered," he murmurs.

Leela flicks her eye open, finds his face in the half-dark. She grips his hips, momentarily holding him in place.

"I remember."

It's true.

Every look. Every touch. Every smile. Leela remembers them all.

She brushes her thumb across Fry's lower lip, locking this memory away safe too.

"_I remember,"_ she whispers, and kisses him to seal the moment in her mind.

* * *

**Day #736**

Leela may never experience another summer's day in New New York, but the nice thing about spaceflight is that it's always summer somewhere.

There's always a planet of bright white beaches, if you look hard enough. So what if the sky is swirled lavender and bisected by planetary rings? It's still hot enough for sunbathing, and there is still an ocean stretching off into the blue distance, and Bender is always willing to cram the cooler in his compartment with ice-cream.

"Oh yeah," Fry says happily. "It doesn't get better than this, baby."

He's not talking to her. At least, not in any more than the general way. Fry has a habit of tacking "baby" or "dude" onto the end of his sentences, which could be a Stupid Ages quirk of his, or could be something he picked up from Bender, over the years. It doesn't usually bother her. Usually, Leela thinks it's symptomatic of his goofy enthusiasm about life. But today . . .

Today is one of the days she chose not to tell him. It takes too long, sometimes, to explain. It's too hard to watch him struggle with the weight of it. Sometimes Leela just wants things to be easy. Sometimes all she wants is a nice day, at the beach, with Amy and Bender and the rest of the crew, where everything feels like it did before.

Leela watches Fry, under her shades.

He looks happy. Relaxed.

_Let it go, _she tells herself.

And she does.

She watches him try to lick ice-cream off his elbow, and hides her smile. She joins the crew in a game of volleyball, and whups Fry's ass as usual, and when the game is over she resists the urge to walk into his arms and kiss the spot where the ball bounced off his forehead. "Loser," she says fondly instead, and Fry blushes pink at her smile, but that's all.

It's enough.

It is. It's _enough_.

They eat fried shrimp, and Bender sets off some illegal fireworks in the daytime, clearing the rest of the beach. Eventually he burns through his supply and joins Fry in his attempt to sculpt a scale model Planet Express ship out of sand.

Leela lets Amy paint her toes, and takes one of the quizzes in her magazine - _Find Your Perfect Man - _as she stares at the back of Fry's head_. _

"You should be with someone fun and spontaneous, who balances out your serious attitude," Amy reads. "A free spirit is a nice counterpoint to your goal-oriented mindset, and will help remind you of all the good things life has to offer. Consider a younger partner, to really recharge your energy in the bedroom." She laughs, blowing her on her still-drying fingertips to set the polish faster. "That's what Kiffy got."

"That doesn't surprise me," Leela says drily.

She has a sudden image of Kif and Amy lying in bed, lazing on a Sunday morning as they take turns giving each other this quiz. Or sharing breakfast. Eating pancakes in their pajamas, listening to morning radio, utterly at ease in the rhythm of their life.

She'll never have that. She'll never wake up beside Fry in the morning. They'll never argue over whose turn is to make breakfast, or make plans over coffee, or fall into a routine.

A lump forms in her throat.

"Excuse me," she murmurs.

She walks back to the ship, climbs down into the hold where no-one will bother her, and cries.

* * *

**Day #****983**

It gets worse. It becomes a funk she can't break out of, this thing.

She parks the ship sloppily, today, and coffee from Fry's Universebucks frappucino shoots out and spatters him. Leela reaches over without thinking - without looking, almost - to swipe away a spot from behind his ear.

And he stares at her.

They all do. It's too intimate, this gesture. Leela is not supposed to be this comfortable with him. She's not supposed to know his body this well, to think of it almost as an extension of her own. The way lovers do. The way wives do.

* * *

She finds herself down in the hold again, having made some excuse. She's sobbing harder than she does at the end of ET.

"Are you crying?"

It's Bender. When she raises her head and he sees her red-rimmed eye, he backs away quickly.

"I'll get Fry."

"No!" Leela scrubs her eye with the heel of her hand. "Don't. I'll stop in a minute."

"If you say so." Bender regards her warily. "You didn't cry this much when I flushed the rat."

He edges closer.

"You know, if you crashed and burned in the romance department, I have a finely-honed criminal skill set I could _maybe_ be persuaded to use for revenge."

He actually seems sincere, and a laugh bubbles up out of Leela almost against her will. At least Bender never changes. And she wouldn't want him to.

"Thank you. That means a lot to me, Bender."

On impulse, Leela holds out her hand for a drag of his cigar. After a beat of bewildered staring, Bender hands it over.

"Ugh." Leela coughs. "That's foul."

"It is?"

Leela shudders.

"Absolutely. Why do you smoke these things?"

Bender shrugs.

"They look cool," he says.

"Yes, but they _taste_ foul."

"Humans do it," Bender says defensively. Then, a little less so, "It's not like I can taste it. I can't taste anything."

Leela nods, passing the cigar back. Something possesses her mouth.

"I want something I can't have," she admits. "Something I'll never have. I don't know how to accept that."

Bender considers this, grinding the cigar out on his palm.

"If the _something_ is dingus up there, you already got him. If you want him. So I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's somethin' else."

Leela opens her mouth, shuts it again, and eventually settles for a shrug. What can she tell him? That he's half right? That it's complicated? She doesn't have the energy to explain.

Even if she did, she's not sure Bender would understand. Bender has always lived for the day. He's an instant gratification kind of robot. "More of the same, forever", is exactly what he _wants_ from Fry. There is nowhere else he would ever want their friendship to go. Leela's need for Fry to build something with her, _evolve_ with her . . . that's not something she thinks Bender could ever wrap his head around.

She's probably right - but Bender has gone unusually quiet. For the first time, Leela thinks he might actually be trying to understand how she feels.

"I don't believe in never," he says at last. "Never is for losers. If someone told _me_ I could never do something, I'd do it anyway, just to stick it to 'em. I'd do it the hardest. I'd do it the best. I'd be the _coolest_. And anyone who didn't like it could eat my dirt."

He buffs his paintwork, affecting indifference.

"I don't care what you want. It's probably something lame and human, like true love or inner peace. You humans are all tragic. But" - he meets her eye - "_never_ is a chump word, and I never took you for a chump."

Leela stares at him. Okay, so it was ego-centric. And the robot hasn't shown any interest in hearing more about Leela's feelings. But there's no denying it. In his own strange, self-centered way, Bender just tried to _relate_.

And she has no idea what to make of that.

"Bender . . . did you just give me advice?"

"What? No! Up yours!"

"Well, it was good advice."

"I _said_, up yours."

Leela fights a smile.

"Thank you, Bender."

Bender groans.

"Whatever."

Halfway to the door, the robot stops.

He lights up a new cigar, bigger and more noxious-smelling than the one before.

And he smiles.

"Go big or go home, baby," he tells her.

* * *

**Day #999**

_Go big or go home, baby. _

Bender's words have been brewing inside her, slowly formulating into a plan. It's a Bender kind of plan, all show and bluster, and ultimately it won't change anything. But for the first time, Leela can see the appeal in a big, futile gesture. For the first time, she feels as if she understands Fry's opera, his quest for the perfect candy heart, the thing he told her he did with the stars.

There's a kind of catharsis in trying, even when she knows it won't lead anywhere.

She applies the finishing touches to her lipstick in the ship's mirror and cranks up the radio, singing along.

"And when I'm sad, you're a clown, and if I get scared, you're always aroouunnnd . . ."

A smile breaks across her face, uncontrolled. This song, Leela decides, is a masterpiece of the ancient world.

She swerves the ship at the Robot Arms Apartments. _Whoops. Almost overshot it._ But she pulls around just in time, dips her speed, and . . .

The nose of the ship cuts through the window like a slice of cake dropped through a pane of sugar. The glass shatters softly, gracefully, around her.

Leela shakes it off her shoulders as she climbs out of the cockpit and vaults into the apartment.

"Morning, boys," she says breezily.

Bender's expression is frozen on the verge of apoplexy, as if he can't decide whether to yell at her or applaud her. Fry's toothbrush is hovering halfway to his mouth, forgotten. He looks faintly dazed, as if he thinks he might be dreaming, but the dream is so good he doesn't care.

"There's a door," Bender says at last. "Human-sized and everything. It's right over there."

Leela shrugs.

"I didn't feel like using it. I felt like making an entrance today." She twirls the ship keys between her thumb and her forefinger, and looks Bender dead in the eye. "Go big or go home, I say."

Fry laughs, and Leela smiles at him.

Sonny and Cher is still blaring out of the cockpit.

"_I got you, I won't let go,_

_I got you to love me sooooooo . . ."_

Leela smiles on, silently willing him to understand.

"Um." Fry gestures. "You have . . . in your . . . uh."

He reaches up, gently, and shakes glass out of her hair. Then he hesitates. When Leela still doesn't react he swallows and touches her cheek, softly, with the ball of his thumb.

She's bleeding. Whether the cut was caused by glass or hail, Leela can't tell.

Fry's own cheek is smooth and unblemished, today. For the first time, she must have got here before the hailstone caught him.

Leela decides to take that as a good omen.

Fry's hand is still cupping her cheek. If he was a braver man, he'd kiss her now. _Do it, _Leela thinks. _Lean in. Kiss me. Do it, Fry. _

But he won't, of course. He doesn't know she wants that.

She wonders what it would be like, for Fry to kiss her with confidence. To surprise her with it, take her breath away in a moment she's not expecting it. To kiss her awake in the morning, or kiss her when she's trying to focus on flying at the wheel of the ship, or kiss her in the middle of a sentence because he already knows how it ends. She wants that. She wants that so badly it aches.

Leela reaches up, carefully, and settles her hand on top of Fry's, holding him in place. A bubble of quiet has fallen over them, one of those delicate, oddly intense moments their friendship always seemed to teeter on the edge of.

Fry's other hand has found its way to her hair. He winds a curl around his fingers and lets it spring loose again, transfixed. His gaze has turned hazy and dreamlike, and when he leans in, there is a moment, a heartbeat, where Leela thinks he might really -

Bender punches him in the arm and Fry jumps away from her as if scalded.

"Uh. Yeah." He clears his throat and gestures feebly at her cheek. "There."

Leela blinks. Shakes herself.

"Thanks," she says. "Thank you, Fry."

Bender ruins the moment again with a loud, impatient sound.

"I don't know what's happening here," he says, "but I demand an explanation."

Leela winces. _Go big or go home, _she reminds herself. _Don't be such a baby. Even if Fry says no, what does it matter? He won't remember. You can pretend it never happened. _

When she thinks of it like that, it's easier to push her shoulders back and smile.

"Bender!" she says brightly. "You're right. I should be paying more attention to you. After all, I came to ask you something important."

She ducks back into the ship and tugs out his tuxedo, presenting it to him with a flourish.

"Bender. You may be an evil, kleptomaniac drunk" - her smile widens - "but you're one of my dearest friends, and it would mean a lot to me if you agreed to be best man at my wedding."

Bender stares at her. Then he shakes himself, puffing himself up again with his old bluster.

"I always knew deep down you thought I was the greatest," he declares.

"That's not exactly what I -"

"You said it! No take backs! I'm your number one choice!"

The robot is already shrugging into his tux, looking so pleased Leela can't help but smile.

"There's no-one else I'd want," she says sincerely. "And I know the groom will feel the same way."

"Um." Fry has found his voice at last. He looks quietly devastated. "You're – you're getting married?"

"Well." Leela swallows. "I hope so."

She takes a deep breath, and reaches out for his hands. How do they do this, in all those old movies Fry likes? Oh, right . . .

She sinks to one knee, and smiles shyly up at him.

"If you'll have me."

Bender - who has been pulling on his tuxedo pants - overbalances and falls over in shock.

Fry stares down at her, mouth agape.

Leela's heart is thudding in her chest. Maybe he doesn't understand what she's asking him.

She wets her lips – her mouth has gone dry - and tries again.

"Will you marry me? Today?"

Fry says nothing. He just stands there, staring at her. He seems frozen. The only glimmer of hope is how tightly he's holding her hands. He doesn't seem aware of it.

It gives Leela the strength to keep smiling up at him, even as the silence balloons around them and she feels her face burn.

Thankfully Bender can be relied upon to break the tension.

"Is this a scam?" he demands. "Ooh, an insurance scam! Those are my favorite. Or - ooh, ooh! - you're doing reality TV!"

"What? No, of course not."

"Then what gives?"

"Yeah." Fry has finally unfrozen. He summons his voice at last. "Yeah," he says weakly. "Ha. Ha. What gives? Do you need a, a space green card, or . . . something? Because as your friend, I'll be a part of any scam you want. Just ask Bender. There's nothing I won't do for a friend. I'm the best friend ever. Anything you want, I'm there! Ha, I mean, anything you _need_. Because you don't _want_ to marry me, obviously, but if you need to I'm there, I am all yours baby –" He chokes. "I mean, not baby! Buddy! Bestie! Buster!"

Leela sighs.

"Fry," she says gently. "You're hyperventilating."

"Ha! Good one, Leels! Hahaha -"

Leela sighs again.

"Alright, I'm getting up." She stands, brushing off her knees, and lays a palm on Fry's chest to steady him. "Breathe, Fry."

He blinks, gulping like a stranded fish. Leela waits patiently for him to calm down.

"No scams," she says, when he seems to have recovered a little. "No insurance. No immigration. No fraud of any kind. No . . . mind-altering substances. Or hidden camera stunts. No wagers with Bender. And no hypnotists." She strokes her thumb absently over his heart, and tries another smile. "I really want to marry you, Fry. For real."

Fry's hand is shaking. He reaches for her, drops his arms, half-reaches out again. His mouth opens and closes, soundless.

His voice, when it does emerge, comes out as a croak.

"Why?"

_Because we've been trapped in this loop for years now, _Leela thinks. _And if I can't pretend I have a future with you, just for one day, I think I might really go insane. _

"Because I love you," she hears herself say instead.

"Bu - but -" Fry shakes his head hopelessly.

Leela watches him. This is new. Fry has never doubted her before. He has never struggled to accept what she was telling him like this.

Leela frowns.

Every other time she confessed her love to Fry, it followed the story of the time loop, or the story of her coma dreams, and Fry seemed to accept it more readily. It seemed to make perfect sense to him, that Leela would fall in love with him after watching him die.

_Because_ she watched him die.

_Oh, no. _

The truth of what she's been doing hits her like a slap to the face.

All this time. Every time Leela thought she was telling him the truth about her feelings, _Fry_ thought she was telling him something else. A story where she only fell in love with him after his tragic death, or because of her own almost-death.

It has never occurred to him that Leela might have loved him all along.

She hears herself laugh. All this time, and she still found a way to waste it. All this time, and she's still a fool.

"I love you," she says again.

She coughs.

"Bender, can you give us a minute alone please?"

Bender rolls his optics.

"No way," he snorts. "I'm live-streaming this whole crazy bit. Say cheese, baby!"

Leela sighs.

"Excuse us."

She takes Fry by the arm and steers him into the cockpit of the ship, slamming the door in Bender's sulking face.

Fry relaxes a fraction when he realizes they're alone. He blinks up at Leela, still looking faintly bemused.

"Since when do you love me?"

"Honestly?" Leela sinks into the seat beside him, watching his face. "I'm not sure," she says at last. "But probably longer than I'd care to admit."

"Yesterday?"

Leela laughs.

"Longer than that."

She brushes her fingers across his cheek, watches his throat bob as he swallows.

"When I woke up from my coma," she says, "you were there. You looked terrible." She smiles. "And it was the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen. You. _Alive_. Smiling at me." She squeezes his hand. "You smile at me every day. Did you know that? I'm not sure you do. Sometimes I think you don't even notice. But I do."

Her gaze drops to her feet.

"Do you know how many people smile at me in a day, Fry?"

"Uh. A thousand? Ten thousand? Fifty two?"

"No." Leela shrugs, trying to keep her tone offhand. "Three, maybe. My parents, if I go visit them. And you. Always you. Lord knows why."

"Because you make me happy," Fry blurts out. "Because." He stops. The tips of his ears are turning red. "Because. Sometimes you look at me like you're looking at me now. All, uh . . ."

"Soft?" Leela guesses. She sighs. "You have that effect on me. Normally I suppress the hell out of it, because it scares me so much. But I'm tired of living like that. I won't do it anymore."

She reaches for his hand.

"I can go on, if you want." She laughs softly. "I have more."

"You do?"

"Sure."

Leela settles back in her seat, considering. Fry's hand feels comfortable in hers.

"Let's see," she says. "You smile at me. Already established. But you make me laugh too. It's not always intentional, because let's face it, you can be an idiot. But you're _my_ idiot. And honestly, it makes life a lot more fun."

The corner of Fry's mouth quirks up in a smile. Leela pinches the dimple it creates in his cheek, enjoying it.

"And even when we fight," she tells him, "I don't know, I get a kick out of it. You get under my skin. I get on your back. And I . . . don't hate it."

Fry is smirking now.

"You mean you think it's hot."

Leela rolls her eye.

"Fine. Yes. You get under my skin because a part of me not-so-secretly wants you . . . well. Under my skin."

"And on my back."

"That too."

Leela flashes him a wicked smile and enjoys the moment when Fry's brain catches up to his mouth and he processes what she's just said. He makes a noise in his throat that sounds like "Errk."

Leela holds up a hand to stop him before he can derail her train of thought any further.

"But it's not all about that. As enjoyable as our sexually-charged petty bickering can be – and yes, it's very enjoyable - the truth is . . ." She hesitates. "I can be stubborn. And opinionated. I don't always take other people's feelings into account, and a lot of the time, I'm so sure I'm right I don't even stop to consider the alternative. It makes me a good captain but a terrible friend, sometimes."

"You're not a good captain," Fry interrupts. "You're a _great_ captain. And a great friend. And -"

Leela smiles.

"What I'm trying to say," she continues, "is that I can be myself with you. As off-putting as that self would be to anyone else. I feel safe arguing with you because -"

"It doesn't matter."

"Right."

"We always work it out."

"Right. Because we care about each other. Which brings me to my other point: you worry about me. Most of the time it's completely misguided. We both know I can handle myself in a combat situation. And you have _got_ to stop throwing yourself in front of things to save me. It's almost always ineffective and honestly, it's just a world of trouble." She squeezes his hand. "But it is very sweet. And I like that you care so much. I like that you think of the little things I forget about. Soup when I'm sick and pizza for my parents and . . . nightmares I avoid talking about."

Fry opens his mouth again, and Leela cuts him off.

"Later," she promises. "I'll tell you everything. But it's a long story and right now it's not important. What's important is that I love you, Fry. And I've wasted too much time already. I want to marry you. It would mean the world to me if you said yes."

"Leela . . ." Fry's voice is thick. He is trying, and failing, to blink back tears. "I've loved you since the day I first came to the future. If you want me then there's no universe where I'm ever saying _no_."

"Oh, good," Leela murmurs. "That's a relief. Because my wedding dress is in the ship and I had no back-up plan in the event you brutally rejected m-"

Fry kisses her, faster than she ever thought he could move. He's smoother too, the moment almost seamless as he captures her mouth with his, easing into her bottom lip -

This, Leela decides, was worth waiting for. Every minute.

"Hey! Meatbags!" Bender breaks the moment by hammering on the glass. "You can't suck face before the wedding!"

* * *

It's a nice wedding, in the end. A little rushed, sure, and there is an uncomfortable interlude where Leela has to convince Amy she has not, in fact, lost her mind. But it passes and Amy agrees to be her maid of honor, just as she'd hoped. Her parents can't be there, of course, but Bender promises to live-stream the ceremony and they both cry on the uplink and tell her it's about time she got her act together. Then her father swears to set El Chupanibre on Fry if he ever hurts her. It's very sweet.

The only venue they can get on such short notice is the Vampire State Building. It's not ideal, what with the rooftop and the hail and everything, but Leela hardly cares.

It's her wedding. It doesn't matter if she and Fry have to yell their vows at each other over the howling wind. Nothing will ruin the romance of this moment.

"I LOVE YOU!" she tells Fry, as they huddle together under a makeshift awning. The fairy lights flicker on and off as the storm picks up in intensity. "I'M SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO ADMIT IT!"

"WHAT?"

"I SAID, I'M SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG!"

"WHAT?"

Leela grips Fry's face, her mouth an inch from his.

"I! LOVE! YOU!"

Fry laughs.

"I LOVE YOU TOO! LET'S KISS ALREADY!"

* * *

The reception is nice. Planet Express isn't the venue Leela dreamed of for her afterparty, but no-one throws a party better than Bender, and it turns out Fry has curated an entire wedding playlist. Because of course he has.

It's a little archaic, like everything he listens to, but it has a certain charm.

"You Are The Sunshine Of My Life?" Leela teases, as Fry twirls her on the dancefloor. "Really? You don't think that's just a _little_ corny?"

"No," Fry says stubbornly. "It's Stevie Wonder! My mom always said he was the most romantic singer who ever lived. Him and Jon Bon Jovi."

"_Bon Jovi?"_

"Oh baby, you ain't seen nothin' yet." He reels her in, grinning. "_I-I-I-I-I-I-I will love you alwaaaaaaaayssssss . . ."_

"Oh lord."

"Hair metal is the most romantic genre of music."

"Is that so?"

"You bet. It's also the genre with the best hair. After disco, obviously."

Leela smiles.

"Obviously." She rests her cheek against his and shuts her eye, swaying in time to the music. "Fry?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Let's get out of here."

* * *

In the past, when Leela dreamed about her wedding night, she envisaged a nice hotel, four stars ideally, three at a minimum, and a bed with rose petals strewn on it in the shape of a heart. She used to imagine champagne on ice, and room service oysters, and fancy white robes she might accidentally-on-purpose take home as a souvenir the next morning.

Her imaginings were never set in her own apartment. In them, her carpet wasn't soggy and she never had to stop and tape up newspaper over her own broken window. Her wedding dress wasn't soaked through. The slideshow of her imagination never featured the groom accidentally stepping in broken glass, or the two of them chasing down an overexcited Nibbler and barricading him in the kitchen for the night.

Then again, her imagination never showed her Fry sitting on her bed, tugging off his bow tie, either. It never conjured up his easy smile, or the way he turned pink when she stepped in to work the knot free for him. And it utterly, utterly failed to capture the look on Fry's face when she stepped out of her wedding dress and let it pool at her feet.

* * *

"It's almost midnight," Fry whispers.

Leela sighs and burrows down under the blankets. She can feel the thud of Fry's heartbeat against her forehead.

Fry is breathing in the smell of her hair.

"What are you thinking?" he says softly.

"I'm not thinking anything."

"Leela?"

"Mmm?"

"What if we don't fall asleep? What if we stay awake all night? Then we'd have to break the loop. Then I'd _have_ to remember."

Leela groans.

"Fry. Let it go."

"But -"

"I told you. Even if we could break the loop, you wouldn't remember anything. You'd be dead, and I'd be miserable. I don't want that for either of us. Please, just let it go."

Fry is silent. Then he pushes her back so he can look in her eye.

"Like you let it go?"

"Fry -"

"I know, I know. You explained. I got it. But there's another you still out there somewhere, all alone. I hate that. And I hate thinking about me forgetting you, every day in this reality. I want you to be happy. And you're not. That's not right."

Leela sighs. It's getting late. She really doesn't want to end today on an argument.

"I'm happy sometimes," she points out. "I'm happy now. Can't that be enough?"

"No!" Fry's hand flies up, a wild gesture. He tugs at his hair. "No! That's not enough! You deserve better than that, Leela. You deserve to be happy all the time. You should be so happy it makes you sick. You should be Double-Soup Tuesday at the orphanarium happy, every day, and -"

"You're being ridiculous."

Leela stares at his face. Angry. Desperate. Upset. For _her_. She feels herself soften.

"I love you," she tells him, because she can. She knots her fingers through his and pulls his hands up over her head, so that Fry sinks down to kiss her again, pulled in by gravity.

He can't seem to stop himself. Leela understands the feeling. In moments like these she feels as if the bubble of their personal universe has shrunk so small it contains nothing but them.

She winds her ankle around his and tugs him down on top of her, a grounding weight. Fry hums in the back of his throat.

"You're right," he says. "I'm being selfish. This could be the only wedding day we ever get. I should be spending it making you happy."

"Oh?" Leela raises her eyebrow. "And how do you plan on doing that?"

Fry nudges her thighs apart. He grins.

"I have a few ideas."

* * *

Fry, Leela has learned, has hidden talents.

She wonders idly what the Robot Devil would have given Fry for his tongue, all that time ago. An opera hardly seems like a fair trade.

"What?" Fry says sleepily. "What's funny?"

Leela rolls over, snuggling into him.

"I think I need to reexamine my priorities. Can you believe we don't do this all day, every day? I must be out of my mind."

She yawns, frowning at the sight of Fry trying to keep his eyes open.

"Fry," she says. A gentle warning.

"What?"

"Go to sleep, Fry."

Fry swallows.

"I know. I will." He sweeps her hair out of her eye, captivated. "Soon," he murmurs. "Soon. I swear."

Leela lets her eye drift shut.

"I love you, Leela," Fry whispers.

"I love you too," she mumbles back.

And falls into sleep.

* * *

**Day 1000**

8 am.

Leela slams her hand down on the alarm, and rolls over onto her back.

She's alone, of course. She's always alone. What else did she expect?

She stares at her bare hand, turning it back and forth in the light as she tries to remember the feeling of the ring on her finger.

Nibbler hops up on the bed beside her, chittering for food. Leela scratches him absently under the chin.

"I'm married," she tells him. "I married Fry. Isn't that funny?"

Nibbler's only response to squeak and fall off the bed. Not that she'd really expected anything else. Nibbler is sweet, but his thought process don't tend to extend any further than his next meal. Leela doesn't even think her furbaby can understand her, half the time.

Still, she loves him anyway, so she gives him an extra ham for breakfast. Then she dumps the hailstone in her shower drain and slips on her wrist device, setting up Stevie Wonder to play while she brushes her teeth.

It's nice.

She plans her day as she gets dressed. She'll marry Fry again, she decides. Not at the Vampire State Building. Down in the sewers, this time. They can have a traditional mutant wedding, and her parents can attend. They'll like that, once they realize she's serious about it. Her mom might have a family heirloom from her own wedding Leela could borrow. And her dad could give her away. She could even let Bender cater the reception, if she gave the mutants enough warning. He'd like that.

She opens the door, smiling at the thought of it . . .

And walks smack into Fry.

"Uh," he says as he catches her.

"Fry?"

"Uh. Hi."

Leela stares at him. This isn't possible. Fry can't be here.

It's still Wednesday, and Wednesday never changes. 8 am. The hailstone. The cut on Fry's -

The cut isn't there.

Fry looks like he dressed in a hurry. His hair is sleep-rumpled and his shoes don't match. His cell phone is flipped half-open in one hand and Leela can hear a tinny voice emanating from it, repeating the same words in a loop.

_The time is 8:23 am on Wednesday 23rd November._

_The time is 8:23 am on Wednesday -_

Fry notices her staring and flips it shut.

"Fry . . ." Leela swallows. Her heartbeat feels unnaturally loud in her ears. "What are you doing here?"

"Well." Fry rubs the back of his neck. "Funny story. See . . ." He stops. "If I was going crazy, you'd tell me, right?

"Yes. Of course."

"See . . . I had this dream. But I don't think it was a dream."

Leela swallows hard.

"Oh?"

She can't take her eye off Fry's face.

Fry shifts uncomfortably.

"Yeah," he says. "And I thought - I thought if I asked you, you'd tell me the truth."

Leela takes a deep breath.

"Then ask me."

"Okay. What day is today?"

"Wednesday."

Fry nods.

"But -" He stops again.

Leela smiles. She touches his cheek, brushing her thumb over the unbroken skin.

"Ask me," she says softly. "Ask me, Fry."

Fry steels himself.

"How many times has it been Wednesday?"

Leela laughs. She's crying, she realizes. Laughing and crying at the same time. It seems only fitting.

"I'm not sure," she tells him. "A thousand? A thousand and one? I lost count."

She pulls him in close, so that she can feel his heart beat against her own. Fry's gaze is clear and blue and she thinks it might be the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, because he remembers.

They're still in the time loop, _but Fry__ remembers_.

He's smiling at her, like her own personal sunrise, and Leela thinks her heart might burst with joy.

Fry takes her hand, and kisses the empty space where the ring should be.

He grins at her.

"Wanna go around again?"


End file.
